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Article: The murder of Judge Pyncheon: confusion and suggestion in The House of the Seven Gables.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Journal of Evolutionary Psychology
- Article date:
- August 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Institute for Evolutionary Psychology. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In his recent study of The House of the Seven Gables, William J. Scheick says that Hawthorne's novel presents us with a world structured by skeptical empiricism, a world, that is, which we cannot ultimately come to know. Scheick's provocative discussion of the conclusion of Hawthorne's novel maintaines that:
[its confusion] participates in the vexation of the identity of the
genre of romance, which coalesces phenomenal experience and dream
experience without yielding concrete answers as to just what that
"really" happen; and this confusion engages the reader in attempts
to read and interpret that are as frustrating as are similar efforts
by the ...