Roger Malvin's Burial

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Roger Malvin's Burial , German Roger Malvin's burial , is a short story published in 1832 by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne .

It is about the young soldier Reuben Bourne, who leaves his dying comrade Roger Malvin in the forest, but promises him to return and bury him in a dignified manner. However, Bourne fails to keep his promise and is increasingly plagued by remorse. Years later, in a hunting accident, he shoots his only son at the very spot where he once left Malvin. Roger Malvin's Burial is one of the most complex short stories of Hawthorne because of its dense symbolism, numerous allusions to mythical and biblical motifs, but also to historical sources, and has been too diverse , especially since 1955, when Hyatt H. Waggoner "discovered" it for literary criticism Suggested interpretations. The critical interest is directed towards the question of Reuben's guilt - or in Christian terms, the reality of his sin - as well as the impressive presentation of the psychological causes and consequences of his actions. Last but not least, the story, like many other works by Hawthorne, is a critical examination of the Puritanism of the New England colonial era, especially the transfiguration of the Indian Wars in contemporary historiography.

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In 1725, two survivors of the battle of the Indian Wars known as " Lovell's Battle " roamed the New England wilderness , the young Reuben Bourne and the old fighter Roger Malvin, father of Reuben's fiancé Dorcas. They rest under a large rock, shaded by a young oak. Sensing that he is fatally wounded, Malvin asks Bourne to leave him behind and get himself to safety. Reuben initially refuses because he cannot reconcile this request with his conscience. Only after being persuaded for a long time does he agree to set out on his own, also because Malvin persuades him that he might meet reinforcements and thus save both lives. Malvin only asks him: "Return to this deserted rock, put my bones in a grave and say a prayer over them". Reuben swears this by his blood, marks the place with a red handkerchief in the branches of the oak, and sets off.

After a few days he is picked up and taken home. When he comes to his senses, Dorcas wakes up next to his bed and asks anxiously whether her father has died. Reuben is silent, when asked whether he has dug a grave for him, he replies evasively: “My hands were weak, but I did what I could [...]. There is a stately tombstone on his head. ”The two married soon afterwards, and their son Cyrus was born a few years later. Reuben, however, fails to keep his oath, is increasingly tormented by remorse and "slowly turned into an irritable and depressed person". He was also not lucky with the farm and trade, so that the family became increasingly impoverished.

In 1743 he decided to seek his fortune as a settler pioneer and set off with his small family to find a suitable piece of land in the wilderness, but lost his way. On May 12th of that year - 18 years after Reuben left Malvin in the forest - they take a break. Reuben hits the forest with his rifle to provide provisions, but "he wandered forward more like a sleepwalker than a hunter", and "imperceptibly his steps were almost guided in a circle" until he reached a small oak grove device. When he hears a rustling close by, he fires into the undergrowth. A little later Dorcas finds him crouching at the foot of a rock, with the body of young Cyrus lying in front of him. Dorcas sinks down fainted, and at that moment the dry top of an oak loosens and falls "softly and easily on the rocks, on the leaves, on Reuben, on his wife and his child, and on Roger Malvin's bones". Reuben bursts into tears and "at this hour, when he had shed blood dearer to him than his own, a prayer, the first in years, rose to heaven from Reuben Bourne's lips".

Work context

Nathaniel Hawthorne in a painting by Charles Osgood , 1840

Like all his works up to the appearance of the Twice-Told Tales in 1837, Hawthorne initially published Roger Malvin's Burial anonymously. The story first appeared in the 1832 edition of The Token gift book towards the end of 1831. He publicly acknowledged his authorship by 1843 at the latest when the story was reprinted under his name in the Democratic Review , which was published by his friend John L. O ' Sullivan was issued. In 1846 Hawthorne finally took the story in his short story book Mosses from an Old Manse .

The original work context of the story has been lost: It was almost certainly intended as part of the Provincial Tales short story collection , which Hawthorne had completed around 1830, but for which he could not find a publisher after the failure of his first novel Fanshawe , whereupon he finally found the destroyed most of his manuscripts. It is conceivable, but cannot be proven, that the seven stories of the Provincial Tales were originally embedded in a framework plot; in any case, as the title suggests, they were all settled in Hawthorne's home in New England, or more precisely in their colonial days. The lending registers of the Salem Athenæum provide an indication of the time when Roger Malvin's Burial was created : The three volumes of the Collections, Topographical, Historical, & Biographical, Relating Principally to New Hampshire by John Farmer and Jacob B. Moore, from which he provides numerous details for Roger Malvin's Burial , he borrowed from this library repeatedly between December 1827 and April 1829. Alfred Weber therefore assumes that Hawthorne completed the story around the middle of 1829.

Interpretative approaches

Guilt and Sin, Atonement and Redemption: Roger Malvin's Burial as a Problem of Moral Philosophy

The trigger for the external action, such as Reuben Bourne's fatal internal development, is an ethical dilemma . The story is, among other things, a casuistic investigation into questions of practical morality. In the "case" of Reuben Bournes, the question arises whether, when and why he was guilty or, theologically speaking, sinned . Hawthorne's narrator is noticeably ambivalent here. At first, towards the end of the first forest scene, he suggestively asks the question: "... and who would like to find him guilty because he shrank from a senseless sacrifice?" ( And who shall impute blame to him if he shrink from so useless a sacrifice? ); finds himself as Reuben after many years suddenly under the now oddly overgrown oak to which he once and thus his oath had tied his handkerchief, the narrator asks, "By whose fault it was withered?" ( Whose guilt had blasted it? ).

For Mark Van Doren , one of the earliest modern commentators, the case in 1949 was still clear: Reuben “committed a sin and did not confess it when he could,” but the majority of later critics sensed a trick question here : not the objective one Guilt is therefore the focus of the narrative, but the representation of the subjective sense of guilt and its psychological and social causes and consequences (the effects of sin , as the phrase is used). GR Thompson characterizes Hawthorne as an “ethical analyst of moral situations”, who is less interested in a metaphysical-moral statement than in the presentation of the concrete effects of religious or culturally conditioned moral concepts on the individual. In this regard, the character Reuben Bourne has also been described as the forerunner of the character of the hypocritical but inwardly guilt-ridden Pastor Arthur Dimmesdale in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter .

However, some critics take the reality of sin as the central theme of the narrative and thus a certain continuity of puritanical religious rigor in Hawthorne's image of man. Gloria Erlich points out that the narrator describes Reuben's decision as justifiable , that is, as “justifiable, to be justified”, but not as just , that is, “just”. According to the rationalism of the common sense philosophy, for example , his decision may be sensible, but here, as in other of his works, Hawthorne presents the ratio as "diabolical", hence as unchristian - Bournes violates his Christian duty and is punished for it. Furthermore, in the end she recognizes not only a punishment for Reuben, but also for Malvin's sins, because after all Cyrus is also Roger Malvin's grandson, his family tree "withered" as well as the young oak under which he dies. John R. Byers comes to a similar conclusion, for whom the clear Old Testament borrowings are in no way to be read ironically or critically of religion. Rather, the story confronts the reader frankly with seemingly archaic, but nonetheless God-given Old Testament practices such as ritual human sacrifice . Byers, too, sees Malvin at least as guilty as Reuben, both of whom share the fundamentally depraved nature of man, which was emphasized again and again in Puritan theology. Reuben, however, is not punished, rather he is reconciled - like people from time immemorial, in the Old Testament no differently than today - through an atonement with his God.

On the other hand, there are interpretations critical of society and religion, according to which Reuben's guilt is ultimately just as imaginary as his “ redemption ” through the atonement of his son. Robert J. Daly sees Malvin as a "diabolical" character - he points out that "Roger" is a nickname for the devil in New England and makes some allusions to the description of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost , the Roger Malvin if not as the incarnate himself, then at least as a tempter . Theological undertones like this detail would ultimately have an ironic function. However, Daly does not see the puritanism of the 17th or 18th century as the target of Hawthorne's criticism, but rather a Christian code of honor of " chivalry " and soldierly sacrifice. As a specific context he identifies the History of Chivalry of the English historian Charles Mills , whose works enjoyed some popularity after 1820 and which Hawthorne himself read around 1827; In a broader sense, Roger Malvin's Burial is an alternative to contemporary American historiography, which placed the “false” heroism of military conquest over the “genuinely heroic” peaceful conquest.

The most detailed account of the genuinely ethical aspects of Reuben's morally questionable decisions - leaving Malvin alone in the forest, his white lie to Dorcas, finally his failure to keep his oath - can be found in Michael J. Colacurcio . In contrast to Thompson, he claims that Hawthorne is more interested in abstract rules than in empirical details; Although he recognizes the precision of his psychological analysis, Reuben Bourne is ultimately less of an individualized character than a moral example. Like Daly, he believes that Hawthorne primarily wanted to criticize his contemporaries, but for him the narrative is a reconstruction of the puritanical world of ideas designed with almost scientific accuracy (and a correspondingly large aesthetic distance ). He takes as a direct model for Reuben's dilemma the constructed conflicts of conscience of the Anglican moral theologian Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), whose writings Hawthorne repeatedly borrowed from the library between 1826 and 1834. In works such as Ductor Dubitantium , Taylor used similarly tricky situations or “cases” to illustrate how following Christian principles always leads to the right solution, even when in doubt. Taylor's Christian ethic always judges actions according to their motives and less according to their consequences - in this light Reuben's offense does not consist in the fact that he made a wrong decision, but rather in the fact that he was wrong about his true motives and later Dorcas.

Reuben Bourne as a psychological case study

These moral theological considerations find a correspondence in psychological interpretations that see in Reuben's guilt complex the consequences of an imperfect rationalization , i.e. the process of the subsequent justification of one's own, especially affective, action. Hawthorne has often been attested to having anticipated observations of modern psychology, not only in the outward description of psychopathological behavior, but also in the analysis of its internal causes. In the case of Roger Malvin's Burial, Frederick C. Crews ' psychoanalytically influenced essay The Logic of Compulsion in “Roger Malvin's Burial” (1966) has proven to be particularly influential . Crews postulates that Cyrus does not fall victim to either an accident or the will of a cruel providence, but rather an obsession with Reuben. Crews largely manages without references to Freud 's writings, but shows in a very close reading close to the text which terms Hawthorne himself found for his “psychological drama”. In particular, he draws attention to passages in which a distinction between unconscious and conscious processes, voluntary and compulsive action is indicated or expressed.

Like Wagoner before, Crews sees the cause of Reuben's guilt complex in his inability to admit that he left Malvin behind not only out of reason or a sense of responsibility towards Dorcas, but also out of “low” motives such as fear and self-interest. As the narrator states with a discreet understatement , “it cannot be said that no selfish feeling had crept into Reuben's heart, although it was precisely the awareness of it that made him oppose the requests of his companion even more” ( Nor can it be affirmed that no selfish feeling strove to enter Reuben's heart, though the consciousness made him more earnestly resist his companion's entreaties ). Roger's appeals to reason and hope do not completely convince Reuben, but give him the opportunity to rationalize his decision - to Roger, but above all to himself. Outwardly, it seems that Roger has him with a story about a rescue being able to change one's mind from a hopeless situation, but, as the narrator knows, it was "unconscious of himself, still supported by the secret power of various other motifs" ( aided, unconsciously to himself, by the hidden strength of many another motive ). Shortly before he left, Reuben was “only half convinced that he was doing the right thing” and “internally convinced that he would no longer see Malvin alive”. Psychoanalytically speaking , Reuben suppresses his actual motives into the unconscious.

Crews' observation is not least due to Hawthorne's peculiar choice of words, which corresponds to the later psychoanalytic terminology - unconscious before Freud in general simply meant “unknowingly, clueless”. Crews also notes that in addition to fear and self-interest, from a psychoanalytical point of view, another motive for Reuben's decision imposes itself. Roger addresses Reuben as "my boy" and "my son" and assures him that he "loved him like a father" and that he tried to move him to leave with this paternal authority. Reuben replies: "And because you were a father to me, should I therefore perish here and lie unburied in the wilderness?" With the theory of the Oedipus conflict in mind , the answer of psychoanalysis to this question is clearly yes; Crews expressly denies the assumption that Hawthorne's thoughts went that far.

In the farewell scene, Hawthorne again uses the conventional image of the heart as the seat of emotions, which here also include the mere instinct for self-preservation , which is stronger than all good intentions: "His will to live and the hope for happiness were mightily awakened in his heart, and he was unable to resist them ”( the desire of existence and the hope of happiness had strengthened in his heart, and he was unable to resist them ). That Reuben is no longer completely in control of his will only becomes clearer shortly after his departure: At first he runs as fast as he can, driven by a "kind of guilt feeling that sometimes torments people even with actions that appear completely justified" ( ibid sort of guilty feeling, which sometimes torments men in their most justifiable acts ) so as not to have to endure Roger's gaze, but suddenly he returns, “ impelled by a wild and painful curiosity ”, and observes Malvin from afar. For a moment, Reuben is tempted to reverse his decision, although the narrator noticeably no longer locates the cause of this noble wish in his conscious moral sense: Reuben feels “his conscience, or something that was similar to him” ( conscience, or something in its similitude ). After his return home, Reuben continues to persuade himself that he did the right thing, but it turns out that his inner conflict is still unresolved when he begins to suffer from obsessive thoughts :

... concealment had imparted to a justifiable act much of the secret effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him that he had done right, experienced in no small degree the mental horrors which punish the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain association of ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a murderer. For years, also, a thought would occasionally recur, which, though he perceived all its folly and extravagance, he had not power to banish from his mind. It was a haunting and torturing fancy that his father-in-law was yet sitting at the foot of the rock, on the withered forest leaves, alive, and awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental deceptions, however, came and went, nor did he ever mistake them for realities: but in the calmest and clearest moods of his mind he was conscious that he had a deep vow unredeemed, and that an unburied corpse was calling to him out of the wilderness.

“It was the concealment that gave a completely justifiable act the character of a secret guilt; and while reason told him that he had acted rightly, Reuben nonetheless experienced in no small measure the mental torments that persecute him whose crime is not discovered. A certain combination of ideas meant that at times he almost saw himself as a murderer. And over the years, an idea that he recognized as completely foolish and nonsensical, but without the strength to banish it from his mind; it was the tormenting, unavoidable imagination that his father-in-law was still sitting on the withered leaves at the foot of the rock, alive and waiting for his promised assistance. "

The desire to hide from Roger's scrutinizing gaze ( seek concealment ) had accelerated its course in the forest, now the fear of being seen by Dorcas as a coward forces him to conceal the truth about her father. His shame is heightened by the fact that in his village he has to suffer “from every mouth the painful and humiliating agony of undeserved praise”.

If the passages cited by crews are literally readable, others are held in one of impressive metaphors and comparisons; so Reuben's "only secret thought" becomes like "a chain that tied his mind and like a snake that ate its heart". Especially in the second half of the story, Hawthorne chooses ambiguous formulations that not only allow a psychologically realistic interpretation, but also arouse the assumption in the reader that dark or at least higher powers than Reuben's feelings of guilt influence the plot - fate, a curse of the betrayed Roger Malvin, or a punishing god. So Reuben not only urges himself the image of his father-in-law, who is still waiting, but also hears an inner "voice which, only understandable to him, ordered him to go and keep his vow". Later, on his return to the wilderness, he looks around in fear, “as if he were looking for enemies lurking behind the trees”, the trees themselves “looked down at them”, and when there was wind they emitted a “plaintive sound”. When Dorcas found out during a rest that the calendar was showing the eighteenth anniversary of her father's death, Reuben replied ominously: "Pray to heaven that none of us three die lonely in this roaring wilderness". Immediately afterwards, the fatal accident occurs, which Crews claims is not one:

“ Many strange reflections, however, thronged upon him; and, straying onward rather like a sleep walker than a hunter, it was attributable to no care of his own that his devious course kept him in the vicinity of the encampment. His steps were imperceptibly led almost in a circle… He was musing on the strange influence that had led him away from his premeditated course, and so far into the depths of the wilderness. Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat. He trusted that it was Heaven's intent to afford him an opportunity of expiating his sin; he hoped that he might find the bones so long unburied; and that, having laid the earth over them, peace would throw its sunlight into the sepulcher of his heart. From these thoughts he was aroused by a rustling in the forest at some distance from the spot to which he had wandered. Perceiving the motion of some object behind a thick veil of undergrowth, he fired, with the instinct of a hunter and the aim of a practiced marksman. "

“But again many strange ideas pressed on him; he wandered forward more like a sleepwalker than a hunter, and it was without his own doing that his crooked course kept him close to the camp. Imperceptibly, his steps were almost drawn in a circle ... He brooded over the strange impulse that had drawn him so far from the planned direction and so deep into the heart of the wilderness. Unable to penetrate to the secret place of the soul, where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him to him, that a supernatural power had blocked his way back. Heaven, he hoped, would now give him an opportunity to make amends and let him find the bones that had lay unburied for so long; and if he had laid earth on them, the sunlight of peace would shine again into the tomb of his heart. From these thoughts he was startled by a rustling in the forest some distance from where he was. And since he felt something moving behind the thick veil of undergrowth, he fired with the instinct of the hunter and the accuracy of the trained marksman. "

In the end, Crews sees no room for supernatural explanations in these passages: The narrator himself makes it more than clear that the “supernatural voice” he hears and the “curse” that Reuben sees filled with Cyrus' death are just projections of himself disturbed psyche, his shot at Cyrus is a psychopathologically conditioned compulsive act. The almost identical statements by the wagoner and crew on the question of how this compulsion is explained, i.e. why Reuben shoots his son, do not seem entirely conclusive . Both first refer to the story itself, in which it says that Reuben loved his son, "as if everything that was good and happy in his own being had been transferred to this child" and recognized "himself" in him, " as he used to be ”but mysteriously conclude from this that Reuben and Cyrus kill“ the guilty side of himself ”(Crews) or his“ guilty self ”(Wagoner).

Mythical motifs, symbolism

As with many of Hawthorne's other stories, in Roger Malvin's Burial the possibility that supernatural forces are involved basically remains. GR Thompson uses the term double narrative for this peculiarity . Literature History derives Hawthorne's fascination with ghosts, witchcraft and other work of the devil from the lurid literature ( gothic fiction ) of the late 18th and early 19th century ago, who was as much at entertainment value of terror at least as to the possibility of the dark side of human feeling and Behavior. On the other hand, Hawthorne's inventory of horrors is fed by the local superstition of New England, which was historically powerful not only in the Salem witch trials . At Hawthorne, the seemingly supernatural elements fulfill an ambivalent function. References to motifs from mythology or the Bible give his stories a certain weight of meaning, the action an exemplary, symbolic character that leads to the assumption that they contain a “deeper” truth that goes beyond history; Agnes McNeill Donohue, for example, compares Roger Malvin's burial with medieval morality , Reuben Bourne with everyone ; in a very general sense, the story is basically mythical in character. Conversely, however, an ironic intention is always conceivable that creates a comical contrast between the stature of the mythical models and the toil of mortals down here.

In the most non-binding case, one accepts the imponderability of fate as the explanation of what happened; Read in this way, Roger Malvin's Burial finds a counterpart in the German fateful drama (the fading form of Schiller's tragedy) and related prose works such as Ludwig Tieck's Der blonde Eckbert (1797). Fate, for example, is sufficient explanation for Harry Levin ; In The Power of Blackness , a classic study of American romanticism today, he describes the end of the story as one of “those coincidences that seem to reveal the order of the cosmos”. Other interpreters have tried analogies with Greek mythology. Paul S. Juhasz, for example, believes that the myth of the curse of the Atrids was the inspiration for the story. Malvin's fear of not being buried stems from Hawthorne's expressions of the influence of the Indians, "who made war not only with the living but also with the dead" and therefore "attached an almost superstitious importance to burial customs"; a plausible direct source for the details is the poem The Indian Burying Ground by Philip Freneau (1788), well known in Hawthorne's time . This explanation has not stopped many performers from looking for further parallels. The meaning of a ritual burial is also a classic topos of Greek myths. In the world of ideas of antiquity, the unburied were denied entry into Hades ; the importance of observing the funeral rites is fundamental to the last two books of the Iliad or Sophocles' Antigone . JT McCullen speculates about a possible connection with the Roman festival of the dead of Lemuria , at which the deceased loved ones were remembered but also feared their return as harmful spirits - the festival was celebrated on the days before and after May 12th, that is Day both Roger Malvin and Cyrus Bourne are killed. Last but not least, such comparisons also lend themselves to psychoanalytic interpretations, as their vocabulary (such as the “ Oedipus conflict ”) itself is borrowed from Greek mythology.

In addition to these more or less plausible analogies, the ambiguous nature symbolism of history stands out. The use of ambiguous symbols is a characteristic feature of American romanticism - the most famous example is the infinitely ambiguous "whale of the whale" in addition to the letter A , which the protagonist of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter had to wear on her chest as punishment for her adultery Melville's Moby-Dick . In Melville, as in Hawthorne, the impossibility of defining these symbols with a clear meaning is an expression of a more far-reaching epistemological skepticism, which stands in contrast to the confidence of transcendentalism , which hoped for the knowledge of higher truths from the view of nature. In Roger Malvin's Burial , the central symbols are the oak and the rock, in the shadow of which the action begins and ends; but also the forest in general takes on a symbolic meaning. The rock does not appear as a lifeless and senseless natural phenomenon; it is “not unlike a gigantic tombstone” and thus serves at least as a vehicle for an epic prediction . On the rock, “the veins seem to form an inscription in a forgotten alphabet” - which may already spell Reuben's fate; not a few interpreters have seen an allusion to the tablets of the Ten Commandments in the rock . The growth of the oak is a symbol of Reuben's development; at the beginning of the narrative it is a “young, strong tree”, but years later “something strange” was to be noticed about it: “The middle and lower branches were full of green life, and an overabundance of foliage had the trunk almost to the ground overgrown; but a fire seemed to have attacked the upper part of the tree, and the uppermost branch was withered, sapless and completely dead. "

Biblical references, theology, puritanism

The implicit and explicit biblical references of the narrative occupy a special position, since they challenge not only a general symbolic-allegorical but also a theological interpretation. The question arises to what extent it represents a discussion of Christianity in general, and to what extent with the theology of New England Puritanism in particular. In view of the paramount importance of Puritanism in Hawthorne's work, it makes sense to read the biblical elements of the narrative in the context of the typological understanding of the Bible by the Puritans of New England. The tendency towards typological-figurative interpretation has often been described as a defining trait of the Puritans; it not only shapes the understanding of the Bible, but also its understanding of history - worldly events were interpreted as part of salvation history . The typologically formulated self-image of colonial New England as “New Canaan ” or “ City on the Mountain ” has an impact on American exceptionalism into the 21st century , for example in the popular self-image of the nation as “ God's Own Country ”. As Ursula Brumm , author of a standard work on this subject, puts it: “When the Puritan was looking for points of reference for his unexplained fate in this world, then he turned to the Bible. There he found the exemplary characters, situations, images and key words that interpreted life for him. Puritan scriptures are related to the Bible through hints or quotations in almost every sentence; they can not be understood without knowledge of the Bible (or Bible concordance ). "

Saul falls into his sword: detail from Pieter Bruegel's The Suicide of Saul , 1562

Roger Malvin is the only one of the four characters who does not have a biblical name. Hawthorne seems to have chosen his surname based on his historical sources; an Eleazor and a David Melvin are documented as participants in Lovewell's expedition in 1725. Nevertheless, a biblical model has also been given for Malvin: Ely Stock assumes that his death is modeled on that of Saul , the first king of Israel, in the 1st book of Samuel . Just as Malvin worries about not receiving a Christian burial, so Saul fears in his final battle that he will fall into the hands of the unbelieving Philistines: “Saul said to his armor-bearer: Draw your sword and pierce me with it so that these uncircumcised do not come and pierce me and do their mischief with me! ”( 1 Sam 31,4  EU ). When his arms bearers refuse, he kills himself, according to the translation of the King James Bible he “fell” into his sword ( KJV : Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it. ), With Hawthorne Malvin is one of them who perished by the “sword of the wilderness” . According to 1 Sam 31.8-14  EU , Saul's corpse was desecrated by the Philistines, but when this news reached the inhabitants of Jabesch, "all the bellicose men set out, marched all night and took the corpse of Saul and the corpses of his sons" and buried them under a tree. Later lets Saul's son David the bones of Saul and Jonathan in the land of Benjamin bury, and "after God was gracious to the country again" ( 2 Sam 21.12 to 14  LUT ). The fact that Malvin gives Reuben's marriage to Dorcas his blessing may also be significant in this context; Saul promises David the hand of his daughter Michal, "so that she will become a trap for him and the hands of the Philistines will be against him" ( 1 Sam 18.21  EU ).

Dorcas' choice of name seems unsuspicious ; she appears (in the more recent translations of the Bible, however, under the Aramaic name Tabita) in the Acts of the Apostles, she “did many good works and gave abundant alms” ( Acts 9 : 36-42  EU ); Hawthornes Dorcas, the least elaborated figure in the story, also appears as the epitome of feminine care.

The choice of the name Reuben ( Ruben ) raises some questions - it literally means “Behold, a son”, which seems bitterly ironic given the outcome of Hawthorne's narrative. Bourne means "Bach"; the biblical Ruben is characterized as erratic and unsteady, as "seething like water" ( 1 Mos 49,4  EU ), and otherwise his story shows some similarities to the fate of Reuben Bourne. As the eldest son, he is responsible for the fate of his brother Josef, but cannot prevent Josef from being sold into slavery, then lies to his father Jakob about his fate ( 1 Mos 37  EU ) and loses (albeit for a different reason) finally his birthright; later he is liable to Jacob with the life of his sons for the safety of his youngest brother Benjamin: "Then Reuben said to his father: You can kill my two sons if I do not bring him back to you" ( 1 Mos 42,37  EU ).

Jacob's Dream - painting by José de Ribera , 1639

John R. Byers again points to parallels with the story of Jacob , the father of the biblical Reuben. Reuben Bourne is introduced to Hawthorne's tale of being "put his head on his arm, in a restless sleep" tormented by a nightmare - he lies in the shadow of the oak and the rock in the very spot where he will kill Cyrus years later . The biblical Jacob ended up on his flight from Esau to “a certain place” in Canaan and he “took one of the stones of this place, put it under his head and fell asleep there”. In a dream the ladder to heaven appears to him , and the Lord not only promises him numerous offspring, but also: "I am with you, I will watch you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land" ( 1 Mos 28:11 -15  EU ). Jacob finally flees to Haran, where he is initially in the service of his uncle Laban and his daughter Rachel marries. In the end he fled Laban, “put his sons and wives on camels” in order “to return to his father Isaac in Canaan;” beforehand Rachel steals “their father's house god” and takes him with her on the run ( 1 Mos 31:17 -19  EU ) - Hawthorne's story also mentions that Reuben and his family took their "household gods" with them on their way into the wilderness ( Reuben was accompanied by his son in the expedition, for the purpose of selecting a tract of land and felling and burning the timber, which necessarily preceded the removal of the household gods ). After many years of wandering, the Lord finally leads Jacob back to the place where the ladder had appeared to him, built an altar there and buried Deborah, Rachel's nurse, under an oak "which was called the wailing oak". Then God appeared again to Jacob and said to him, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply! A people and multitudes of peoples shall come from you, and kings shall be descended from you, and I will give you the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac, and I will give it to your generation after you. And God rose up from him in the place where he had spoken with him. Jacob set up a stone mark in the place where he had spoken with him, and poured a libation on it, and poured oil on it. And Jacob called the place where God had spoken to him Bethel ”( 1 Mos 35 : 6-15  EU ).

Cyrus , King of the Persians, appears in the book of Isaiah ( Isa 40-48  EU ) as a kind of redeeming figure who releases the people of Israel from Babylonian captivity and enables them to return to Canaan. An intentional biblical reference to Reuben's son Cyrus would seem far-fetched if Hawthorne had not chosen a conspicuous phrase towards the end of his narrative: after he found Cyrus dead, "Reuben's heart was struck and the tears streamed from him like water from a rock" ( Then Reuben's heart was stricken, and the tears gushed out like water from a rock ). After Cyrus has allowed the people of Israel to return, the Lord leads them through the desert ( Is 48:21  EU ), and "He made water gush out of the rock for them, he split the rock and the water flowed" ( KJV : he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out ).

Numerous critics have pointed to the parallels with the sacrifice of Isaac ( Gen 22: 1–19  EU ), with which God tests Abraham's faith - Reuben believes that “a supernatural voice has called him” and “heaven” has “one” for him I wanted to give the opportunity to “make amends”, but unlike in the Old Testament, no divine hand intervenes to avert the bloodshed. Ely Stock supports his speculations about biblical subtexts by referring to specific contemporary preachers who illustrated the significance of Lovewell's battle with these very biblical models. For example, Thomas Symmes glorified the campaign in 1725 in his sermon How Are the Mighty Fallen , referring to the description of Saul's death in Book 1 of Samuel, and Cotton Mathers took the outcome of the battle as an opportunity to invite his listeners to the To exhort Puritan theology-defining federal theological terms to adhere to the duties of the covenant that formed the theological foundation of the Puritan community in New England:

Rembrandt : "The angel prevents the sacrifice of Isaac"

"... you will approve yourselves the Genuine Children of Abraham: and to prove your claim to the blessings of the covenant, if you overcome the Reluctaines of Nature to it - withhold not the Child whom you loved when God calls you. "

"You will prove to be the true children of Abraham and be able to claim your right to the blessings of the covenant if you overcome your natural aversion: Do not hold back your beloved child when God calls you!"

In his covenant with Abraham , God had promised: “Your name will be Abraham (father of the multitude); for I have made you the progenitor of a multitude of peoples. I make you very fertile and let peoples arise from you; Kings will descend from you. I make my covenant between me and you and your descendants, generation after generation, an eternal covenant: I will be God to you and your descendants ”( 1 Mos 17,5-7  EU ). According to the puritanical understanding, Reuben also makes a covenant when he swears by his own blood to return and bury Roger Malvin, and the narrator makes Cyrus dream of choosing a home in the wilderness of America, "father of a race", " To become the patriarch of a whole people ”and“ the founder of a mighty future nation ”,“ children and grandchildren ”would one day mourn his death. But Reuben violates his duties and is punished for it, Cyrus' death puts an end to his "sex", the covenant is not fulfilled. Stock admits the possibility of an ironic reading, but Hawthorne (influenced by Søren Kierkegaard's examination of the sacrifice of Isaac) ultimately assumes an edifying message: Reuben's fate fails because his faith was not established, because he spoke to the voice that tells him that he would be “led straight to Malvin's bones”, unfamiliar, and only through an act of complete surrender and self-sacrifice (“in the hour when he shed blood that was dearer to him than his own”) would he find peace and take trust in God (he says “a prayer, the first in many years”). Hawthorne therefore affirmed the reality of the divine voice, the promise of salvation, and the timeless meaning of religious values.

With such a literal interpretation of the final sentence ("His guilt was atoned for, the curse removed from him"), however, very few critics can make friends; for Richard P. Adams it represents badly perverted nonsense . Robert J. Daly recognizes in principle the assumption that Hawthorne's choice of names or other biblical parallels are deliberately introduced, but postulates that he turns the typological method against himself. The fact that the sometimes contradicting biblical analogies could hardly be meaningfully incorporated into a systematic allegory illustrates precisely that Hawthorne was interested in criticizing the religious exaggeration of historical events such as Lovewell's battle. Just as the “inscription in a forgotten alphabet”, to which the veins of the granite rock seem to resemble, cannot be deciphered, just as little can the will of Divine Providence be read from Reuben's fate down here. Many interpreters have interpreted Roger Malvin's Burial as a warning against religious fanaticism in general and Puritanism in particular. For GR Thompson, for example, the story is a parable of the Puritan experience that Reuben Bourne reflects a comprehensive “historical and cultural pathology” of colonial New England. Bourne is therefore the victim of a religiously induced guilt complex. The puritanical inwardness, the constant concern for one's own salvation, leads to a pathological egoism that does not even stop at the sacrifice of one's own son.

History and historiography, fact and fiction

The background to the story is a historically guaranteed battle of the Indian Wars , Lovewell's Fight (Hawthorne chose the New English dialect variant Lovell ) from May 1725. She understood numerous interpretations not only as an examination of Puritanism or the Indian Wars, but also as a criticism of the presentation of this topic in historiography. Several works have made it clear that Hawthorne adopted numerous details and formulations from his sources, but reinterpreted others ironically. The basic structure of the plot of the opening scene he took from an article that can be found in the first volume of the Collections, Topographical, Historical, & Biographical, Relating Principally to New Hampshire . It says of a certain Lieutenant Farwell:

“ Farwell was afterwards engaged as a lieutenant in Lovewell's fight, and in the commencement of the action was shot through the belly. He survived the contest two or three days, and with one Eleazer Davis, from Concord, attempted to reach home. [...] Though his case was hopeless, Davis continued with and assisted him till he became so weak as to be unable to stand, and then, at Farwell's earnest entreaties that he would provide for his own safety, left him to his fate. Previous to this he had taken Farwell's handkerchief and tied it to the top of a bush that it might afford a mark by which his remains could the more easily be found. After going from him a short distance, Farwell called him back and requested to be turned upon the other side. This was done, and was the last that was known of him. Davis reached Concord in safety. "

“Farwell later took part in Lovewell's engagement as a lieutenant and was shot in the stomach at the start of the fighting. He survived another two or three days and tried to get home with a certain Eleazer Davis from Concord. […] Although there was no hope for him, Davis stayed with him, helped him until he could hardly stand himself, and only left him to his fate when Farwell pleaded with him and assured him that he could look after himself. Before leaving, Davis took Farwell's handkerchief and tied it to the top of a bush so that what was left would be found. Shortly after he left, Farwell called him back and asked him to lie on the other side. This was accomplished, and this was the last known of Farwell. Davis reached Concord unscathed. "

Lovewell's skirmish was one of the most famous episodes in New England history during Hawthorne's lifetime and competed with events such as the story of Pocahontas and John Smith or the landing of the Mayflower for a place among the slowly emerging "founding myths" of the United States. In 1825, the hundredth anniversary of the battle, Massachusetts and Maine celebrated the anniversary with public festivities. At the ceremony on site, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Hawthorne's fellow student at Bowdoin College , delivered an ode praising the exploits of Lovewell's soldiers. According to the version of the events that were described and celebrated on these official occasions, Lovewell and his troops did a great job defending the villages on the settlement border ( frontier ) against Indian attacks. During one of their forays, Lovewell and his 34 soldiers faced a numerically superior horde of Indian attackers, fought valiantly almost to the last man, but killed many Indian fighters, including their chief Paugus, so that his weakened tribe (that of the Abenaki League belonged to) withdrew from the war and posed no further threat to the white settlements.

The death of chief Paugus, textbook illustration from 1872

The circumstances and actual course of the battle, however, are far less glorious, as Hawthorne knew from his own source research, but so are more conscientious historians like Jeremy Belknap . Indeed, Lovewell was a bounty hunter - the Massachusetts Colony Council in 1724 offered a £ 100 premium for each Native American scalp . The episode later known as “Lovewell's Skirmish” comes at the end of a total of three expeditions that Lovewell led into the Indian hinterland in 1725 in order to capture as many scalps as possible. It happened on May 9th that year, when Jonathan Frye, the troop chaplain , sighted an Indian scout in the forest, killed him and finally scalped him; with the scalp bonus he hoped to be able to pay the tax for his imminent wedding. With his action, however, he provoked an attack by an overpowering group of Indian fighters, who almost completely wiped out Lovewell's troop. A particularly piquant detail is the fact that the preacher Thomas Symmes , whose Historical Memoirs of the Late Fight at Piggwacket (1725) contributed significantly to the transfiguration of the events, moved the date of the battle from May 9th to May 8th 1725 in order to cover up the fact that this unwise and unworthy scalp hunt was also a breach of the Sabbath . This is probably played by a passage from Roger Malvin's Burial , which stands in strange contrast to the general narrative style: When Reuben and his family take a break, Dorcas opens the almanac and announces that it is May 12th today, “as if this news were important would ", as Hawthorne's narrator notes seemingly innocent ( Dorcas mentioned, as if the information were of importance, that it was now the twelfth of May ). Still other unsuspicious-looking details reveal Hawthorne's bitter sarcasm only with knowledge of the actual historical circumstances . In order to convince Reuben that help is near, Roger Malvin explains, for example: “Right at the beginning of the fight a coward fled unwounded, and he probably made good progress. And every upright man on the border will shoulder his musket at this news. ”As Hawthorne knew, contemporary sources actually testify that a certain Benjamin Hassell fled at the beginning of the fighting - but when he reached the nearby fort on Lake Ossapy and reported the action, the entire crew deserted for fear of an Indian attack and fled to their home settlements.

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers - in this romanticizing illustration from 1848, an Indian sits on Plymouth Rock and hands the white settlers an ear of corn as a greeting.

In other details, references to historical models are plausible, in particular to the “founding myths” of New England, and therefore the United States. The rock and the oak, the two central symbols of the story, can be associated with two emblematic places and events in American history. Colacurcio connects the rock with Plymouth Rock , the first piece of land that the " Pilgrim Fathers " stepped on when they disembarked the Mayflower in 1620; near this point they founded Plymouth , the first Puritan settlement in America. Reuben and his family on their way through the wilderness are explicitly referred to as "pilgrims" by the narrator. In doing so, they get off course (like the Mayflower, which should actually have landed in Virginia) and get "into an area that was previously only inhabited by wild animals and wild people" ( into a region of which savage beasts and savage men were as yet the sole possessors ) - as James McIntosh notes, here is a passage from the famous history of the establishment of the colony ( Of Plimoth Plantation ), which William Bradford wrote between 1630 and 1647: When the Mayflower reached land after weeks of crossing and the Pilgrim Fathers Seeing their new home for the first time full of fear, Bradford asks, “ What could they see but a forbidding and desolate wilderness, full of wild animals and wild men?” ( Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate Wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men ).

Charles De Wolf Brownell : The Charter Oak , 1857

The description of the oak, to the Reuben his handkerchief and thus his oath ties, resembles strikingly a description of the famous Charter Oak in the collections of Farmer and Moore, Hawthorne's main source. The Connecticut settlers hid their colony's charter in the hollow trunk of this oak in 1687 when the Royal Governor of New England, Edmund Andros , attempted to confiscate it. This charter not only guaranteed the freedoms that Andros tried to curtail, it was also the testimony of the colonists' covenant with one another and with God, and thus formed the theological basis of their community. Given these allusions to the founding myths of New England and the United States, Roger Malvin's Burial seems to make a statement about the importance of American history, but one that hardly shares the confidence of nationalist historiography: the oak symbolizes values ​​that are in complete opposition to greed and brutality the bounty hunt that Reuben Bourne and Roger Malvin brought to this place; The nation, through its greed for land, has forgotten its ideal values ​​and broken the obligations of its “covenant”.

The fact that Hawthorne's story is a criticism of the ancestral devotion of his contemporaries shows, when considering these discoveries of source research, its short “historical” introduction, which will appear unsuspicious to an uneducated reader; Alfred Weber wrote in 1973 that the historical narrator comments had "no great weight" and served (like The Custom-House , the famous preface to The Scarlet Letter ) to give the artist a wide scope for creative imagination and thus to meet the demands to evade factual and truthfulness to which historiography is subject. Knowing the historical facts it becomes clear that the opposite is the case and that the paragraph denounces the falsifications of historiography with biting irony. Lovewell's expedition, which "was undertaken in 1725 to defend the borders", the narrator begins succinctly, is "one of the few episodes from the war with the Indians that can be viewed in the moonlight of romanticism" ( one of the few incidents of Indian warfare naturally susceptible of the moonlight of romance ). This innocent claim is at least, as Ely Stock's source research has shown, a swipe at an article in the Columbian Centinel of May 25, 1825, which, on the occasion of the centenary "anniversary" of the battle, recalled the heroic events of 1725, events that "had no romantic embellishments “ Lovell's Fight and incidents relating to many of those who marched with him, leave nothing to the embellishments of romance ). The narrator continues:

" Imagination, by casting certain circumstances judicially into the shade, may see much to admire in the heroism of a little band who gave battle to twice their number in the heart of the enemy's country. The open bravery displayed by both parties was in accordance with civilized ideas of valor; and chivalry itself might not blush to record the deeds of one or two individuals. [...] History and tradition are unusually minute in their memorials of this affair; and the captain of a scouting party of frontier men has acquired as actual a military renown as many a victorious leader of thousands. "

“If certain circumstances are wisely overshadowed, then the idea will easily succeed in marveling at the heroism of this little band who fought against a double superiority in the heart of the enemy territory. The obvious bravery displayed on both sides was in keeping with the civilized conception of courage, and chivalry itself need not be ashamed of recording the deeds of either party. […] History and tradition are unusually precise in their records of this event; and the captain of a border scout troop has won as much fame as many a victorious leader in thousands. "

Lovewell's fighters were not one bit more "civilized" than those of the Indians; the deeds of only "one or the other" may appear brave, but only then "if certain circumstances are wisely overshadowed" - the accusation of falsifying imagination is directed against historiography, which claims to be "unusually precise" work, and literature, romance supposedly removed from reality , proves to be a corrective to the self-serving oblivion of history and the naive optimism of the nation: Roger Malvin's Burial is thus (in the words of Diane C. Naples) Hawthorne's "parable for the historians of the 19th century ". This ironic interpretation of the first paragraph has, however, been called into question by David Levin, who sees in such a reading the expectations of modern critics more confirmed than a true reflection of Hawthorne's understanding of history. Hawthorne had by no means had in mind the image of a fight of unscrupulous bounty hunters against basically peace-loving Indians who only fight in self-defense. Rather, he knew and understood the entire moral complexity of the historical conflict, such as the fact that the Indians roamed through the forests around Pequawket with the warlike intention of attacking border settlements and had been supplied with weapons by the French in the north, and that Lovewell also acted with the absolutely honest intention of catching the murderers of his neighbors and securing the borders; Hawthorne actually saw something heroic in Lovewell's deeds, and saw his scalp hunting as being in line with the contemporary “civilized view”.

literature

expenditure

The first edition of Roger Malvin's Burial can be found in:

  • The token. A Christmas and New Year's Present . Gray & Bowen, Boston 1832.

The authoritative edition of Hawthorne's works today is The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne , edited by William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce, Claude M. Simpson et al., Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1962–1997. Roger Malvin's Burial can be found in Volume 10:

  • Nathaniel Hawthorne: Mosses from an Old Manse . Edited by Fredson Bowers, L. Neal Smith, John Manning, and J. Donald Crowley. Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH 1974, ISBN 0-8142-0203-9 .

A common reading edition that builds on the Centenary Edition is:

The e-text of the story can be found on the pages of Wikisource :

Wikisource: Roger Malvin's Burial (1832), by Nathaniel Hawthorne  - Sources and full texts (English)

There are two German translations available:

  • Roger Malvin's funeral . Translated into German by Franz Blei . In: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Garden of Evil . Verlag Martin Maschler, Berlin 1925 (= Volume 4 of: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Romane und Erzählungen . 4 volumes. Verlag Martin Maschler, Berlin 1925). A new edition edited by RW Pinson without mentioning the translator Franz Blei has appeared in two editions: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Garden of Evil and Other Stories . Magnus Verlag, Essen 1985, ISBN 3-88400-216-3 and Nathaniel Hawthorne: The garden of evil and other stories . Moewig, Rastatt 1987, ISBN 3-8118-2511-9 .
  • Roger Malvin's funeral . Translated into German by Hannelore Neves. In: Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Pastor's Black Veil. Scary stories . Winkler, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-538-06584-5 .

Secondary literature

  • Harold Beaver: The Case of “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: A. Robert Lee (Ed.): Nathaniel Hawthorne: New Critical Essays . Vision Press, London / Totowa NJ, 1981, ISBN 0-389-20281-9 , pp. 31-47.
  • Virginia O. Birdsall: Hawthorne's Oak Tree Image. In: Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Volume 15, No. 4, 1960, pp. 181-185.
  • Emily Miller Budick: Fiction and Historical Consciousness. The American Romance Tradition . Yale University Press, New Haven 1989, ISBN 0-300-04292-2 .
  • John R. Byers, Jr .: The Geography and Framework of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Tennessee Studies in Literature. Volume 21, 1976, pp. 11-20.
  • Patricia Ann Carlson: Image and Structure in Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: South Atlantic Bulletin. Volume 41, No. 4, 1976, pp. 3-9.
  • Michael J. Colacurcio : The Province of Piety. Moral History in Hawthorne's Early Tales. Duke University Press, Durham NC 1984, ISBN 0-8223-1572-6 .
  • Frederick C. Crews : The Logic of Compulsion in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Volume 79, No. 4, 1964, pp. 457-465. Reprinted in: AN Kaul (Ed.): Hawthorne. A Collection of Critical Essays. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1966, pp. 68-98.
  • Frederick C. Crews: The Sins of the Fathers. Hawthorne's Psychological Themes . Oxford University Press, New York 1966. Reprint: University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1989, ISBN 0-520-06817-3 .
  • Robert J. Daly: History and Chivalric Myth in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Essex Institute Historical Collections. Volume 109, 1973, pp. 99-115.
  • Agnes McNeill Donohue: “From Whose Bourn No Traveler Returns”: A Reading of “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Volume 18, No. 1, 1963, pp. 1-19.
  • Gloria Chasson Erlich: Guilt and Expiation in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Volume 26, No. 4, 1972, pp. 377-389.
  • Burton J. Fishman: Imagined Redemption in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Studies in American Fiction. Volume 5, No. 2, 1977, pp. 257-262.
  • Paul S. Juhasz: The House of Atreus on the American Frontier: Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial” and the Search for an American Myth. In: CEA Critic. Volume 68, No. 3, 2006, pp. 48-58.
  • Jack Kligerman: A Stylistic Approach to Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Language and Style. Volume 4, 1971, pp. 188-194.
  • David Levin: Modern Misjudgements of Racial Imperialism in Hawthorne and Parkman. In: The Yearbook of English Studies. Volume 13, 1983, pp. 145-158.
  • Sheldon W. Liebman: “Roger Malvin's Burial”: Hawthorne's Allegory of the Heart. In: Studies in Short Fiction. Volume 12, 1975, pp. 253-260.
  • David S. Lovejoy: Lovewell's Fight and Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: The New England Quarterly. Volume 27, No. 4, 1954, pp. 527-531.
  • JT McCullen, Jr .: Ancient Rites for the Dead and Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Southern Folklore Quarterly. Volume 30, 1966, pp. 313-322.
  • James McIntosh: Nature and Frontier in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: American Literature. Volume 60, No. 2, 1988, pp. 188-204.
  • Manfred Mackenzie: Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”: A Postcolonial Reading. In: New Literary History. Volume 27, No. 3, 1996, pp. 459-472.
  • Diane C. Naples: “Roger Malvin's Burial”: A Parable for Historians? In: American Transcendental Quarterly. Volume 13, 1972, pp. 45-48.
  • Lea Bertani Vozar Newman : A Reader's Guide to the Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne . GK Hall & Co., Boston 1979, ISBN 0-8161-8398-8 .
  • Frank Obenland: Providential Fictions. Nathaniel Hawthorne's Secular Ethics . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-76968-8 .
  • G. Harrison Orians: The Source of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: American Literature. Volume 10, No. 3, 1938, pp. 313-318.
  • Guy Ortolano: The Role of Dorcas in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Nathaniel Hawthorne Review. Volume 25, No. 2, 1999, pp. 8-16.
  • David Ramsey: The Legible Landscape: Sources for the Sepulchral Setting of “Roger Malvin's Burial” (PDF; 84 kB). In: 言語 文化 論 集. Studies in Language and Culture. Volume 27, No. 1, 2005, pp. 205-219.
  • Arthur E. Robinson, “Roger Malvin's Burial”: Hawthorne and the American Environment. In: Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal. 1977, pp. 147-166.
  • John Samson: Hawthorne's Oak Trees. In: American Literature. Vol. 52, No. 3, 1980, pp. 457-461.
  • William J. Scheick: The Hieroglyphic Rock in Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Emerson Society Quarterly (ESQ). Volume 24, 1978, pp. 72-76.
  • Harold Schlechter: Death and Resurrection of the King: Elements of Primitive Mythology and Ritual in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: English Language Notes. Volume 8, 1971, pp. 201-205.
  • Dieter Schulz: Imagination and Self-Imprisonment: The Ending of “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Studies in Short Fiction. Volume 10, 1973, pp. 183-186.
  • Ely Stock: History and the Bible in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Essex Institute Historical Collections. Volume 100, 1964, pp. 279-296.
  • GR Thompson : The Art of Authorial Presence. Hawthorne's Provincial Tales . Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1993, ISBN 0-8223-1321-9 .
  • WR Thompson: The Biblical Sources of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Publications of the Modern Language Association (PMLA). Volume 77, No. 1, 1962, pp. 92-96.
  • Hyatt Wagoner : Hawthorne. A critical study . Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1963.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All quotations below based on the translation by Hannelore Neves.
  2. ↑ [Nathaniel Hawthorne:] Roger Malvin's Burial. In: SG Goodrich (Ed.): The Token. A Christmas and New Year's Present. Gray and Brown, Boston 1832, pp. 161-188.
  3. ^ Nathaniel Hawthorne: Roger Malvin's Burial. In: The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review. Volume 13, No. 62, August 1843, pp. 186–196 (digitized version )
  4. ↑ For the content and origin of the Provincial Tales see: Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthorne . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1973, pp. 65–83.
  5. ↑ Mark Van Doren: Nathaniel Hawthorne . William Sloane Associates, New York 1949, p. 80.
  6. ^ GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. P. 19.
  7. ↑ Gloria Chasson Erlich: Guilt and Expiation in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. Pp. 380-385.
  8. ↑ John R. Byers, Jr .: The Geography and Framework of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. Pp. 17-19.
  9. ^ Robert J. Daly: History and Chivalric Myth in "Roger Malvin's Burial". Pp. 103-104.
  10. ^ Robert J. Daly: History and Chivalric Myth in "Roger Malvin's Burial". Pp. 110-115.
  11. ↑ For more information: Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. Pp. 109-115.
  12. ↑ Frederick C. Crews: The Logic of Compulsion in "Roger Malvin's Burial". P. 459.
  13. ↑ Frederick C. Crews: The Logic of Compulsion in "Roger Malvin's Burial". P. 460.
  14. ↑ Freud himself noted this in an essay in English in 1912: The term unconscious , which was used in the purely descriptive sense before, now comes to imply something more. It designates not only latent ideas in general, but especially ideas with a certain dynamic character, ideas keeping apart from consciousness in spite of their intensity and activity. Compare the entry unconscious, adj. and n. in the Oxford English Dictionary , online: < http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/210776 > (access authorization required)
  15. ↑ Frederick C. Crews: The Logic of Compulsion in "Roger Malvin's Burial". Pp. 460-461.
  16. ↑ Frederick C. Crews: The Logic of Compulsion in "Roger Malvin's Burial". Pp. 459 and 461-462.
  17. ↑ Frederick C. Crews: The Logic of Compulsion in "Roger Malvin's Burial". P. 461; Hyatt H. Wagoner, p. 85.
  18. ↑ one of those coincidences that seem to lay bare the design of the universe . Harry Levin: The Power of Blackness . Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1958, p. 55.
  19. ↑ James McIntosh: Nature and Frontier in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. P. 194.
  20. ^ JT McCullen, Jr .: Ancient Rites for the Dead and Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. In: Southern Folklore Quarterly. Volume 30, 1966, pp. 313-322.
  21. ^ Virginia O. Birdsall: Hawthorne's Oak Tree Image. Pp. 182-183; Frederick C. Crews: The Logic of Compulsion in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. P. 464.
  22. ↑ Ursula Brumm: Puritanism and Literature in America . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1973, ISBN 3-534-06142-X (= income from research 20) pp. 25-26.
  23. ↑ G. Harrison Orians: The Source of Hawthorne's "Roger Malvin's Burial". P. 315.
  24. ↑ Ely Stock: History and the Bible in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. Pp. 287-288.
  25. ^ WR Thompson: The Biblical Sources of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. P. 95.
  26. ^ WR Thompson: The Biblical Sources of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. Pp. 93-94.
  27. ^ WR Thompson: The Biblical Sources of Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. P. 94.
  28. ↑ Cotton Mather: Educator. Boston 1725. Quoted from: Ely Stock, History and the Bible in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. P. 289; Stick marks Reluctaines with a [sic].
  29. ↑ Ely Stock: History and the Bible in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. Pp. 293-294.
  30. ^ Robert J. Daly: History and Chivalric Myth in "Roger Malvin's Burial". Pp. 100-101.
  31. ^ GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. Pp. 96-97.
  32. ^ GR Thompson: The Art of Authorial Presence. Pp. 100-102.
  33. ↑ David S. Lovejoy: Lovewell's Fight and Hawthorne's “Roger Malvin's Burial”. Pp. 530-531.
  34. ↑ Summary based on: Robert J. Daly: History and Chivalric Myth in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. Pp. 105-109.
  35. ^ Thomas Symmes: Historical Memoirs of the Late Fight at Piggwacket. Boston 1725 ( digitized ); Reprint: William Abbatt, New York 1909 (digitized version )
  36. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. P. 128.
  37. ^ Diane C. Naples: "Roger Malvin's Burial". A Parable for Historians? P. 46.
  38. ↑ Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. Pp. 127-124.
  39. ↑ James McIntosh: Nature and Frontier in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. P. 193.
  40. ↑ John Samson: Hawthorne's Oak Trees. Pp. 458-459.
  41. ↑ John Samson: Hawthorne's Oak Trees. Pp. 460-461; Michael J. Colacurcio: The Province of Piety. Pp. 127-128.
  42. ^ Alfred Weber: The development of the framework narratives Nathaniel Hawthorne . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1973, p. 79.
  43. ↑ Ely Stock: History and the Bible in “Roger Malvin's Burial”. P. 282.
  44. ^ Diane C. Naples: "Roger Malvin's Burial". A Parable for Historians? P. 47.
  45. ↑ David Levin: Modern Misjudgements of Racial Imperialism in Hawthorne and Parkman. Pp. 157-158.