Hawthorne’s Deconstruction Of The Enlightenment Vision Of Science

Nathaniel Hawthorne is the most famous romantic novelist and psychological novelist in the19th century. His short stories are based on the history and real life in New England, and discussed the human nature and the destiny of human beings. The famous short story, such as "Young Goodman Brown","The Minister’s Black Veil" revealed that everyone had some hidden evil, and expressed the point of view that human nature is evil and people are lonely. Meanwhile, some other stories, such as "Rappaccini’s daughter", reflect his doubts on science and ration, and his thoughts of opposing Ultra and paranoid."The Celestial Railroad" pointed out that the development of technology enriched people’s material comforts, but destructed men’s spirit.This thesis, through a wide-ranging discussion on the works of Hawthorne, aims to understand his deconstruction to the vision of science in the age of enlightenment, hoping to give a lesson to the present society. Chapter one is a brief introduction to the whole thesis. First, it introduces broadly to readers about Hawthorn’s vision of science, including the historical background, some of Hawthorn’s novels and the embodying of his vision of science in them. Next, it introduces the objective and methodology of the study which aims at discussing Hawthorn’s vision of science using the method of deconstruction. The last part of the first chapter is devoted to how the thesis is structured. Chapter two introduces the vision of science in the age of enlightenment in detail, including its main thoughts and a literature review. Then it tells the definition of deconstruction and its essential claims, in addition to how the deconstruction is brought out, its features and the basic method. Chapter three discusses Hawthorn’s deconstruction to the vision of sciences of that time by analyzing his story "Rappaccini’s daughter", including reason and emotion, good and evil, human and the nature. By comparing with other novels, we analyze the influence of Hawthorn’s deconstruction to the vision of science. Chapter four analyzes the cause of formation of Hawthorn’s vision of science, including his pessimism and his dialectic worldview. Hawthorne works on science of deconstruction in terms of good and evil, reason and emotion of the fuzzy and contradictions, the use of metaphor and symbol technique with seemingly absolute and irrational science many contradictions, to cause people to look at their own point of view.Influenced by the spirit of enlightenment and the Puritan background, Hawthorne gradually formed his own view of science, and expressed it in his works. This thesis, from the perspective of deconstruction, analyzes Hawthorne’s deconstruction of the vision of science in the age of enlightenment in "Rappaccini’s daughter", and discussed the concrete connotation, cause and effect of Hawthorne’s sober view of science, hoping to give some inspiration to people in the rapidly developing world.