From Witchery to Sanctity: The Religious Vicissitudes of the Hawthornes - Hardcover
Although Nathaniel Hawthorne, the renowned author of The Scarlet Letter, shunned organized religion, his stories were heavily weighted with sin and guilt. The fascinating history of generations of Hawthornes and their journey from Puritanism to Catholicism offers a penetrating glimpse into an extraordinary family. As one critic remarked, it is a story enveloped "with a veil woven of intermingled gloom and brightness."
The Birds bring this story of the powerful forces that shaped the Hawhornes to life. We see the vivid portrait of William Hawthorne, who arrived from England in 1630, and his son John, who became the most notorious Hawthorne in his efforts to battle the devil by stamping out witchcraft in the infamous Salem witchcraft trials. As a judge, overseeing public morality, John also had Quakers assaulted, arrested, and sent to trial. When one couple could not pay a fine, Hawthorne had their two children sold into slavery.
Such inhumanity became the subject of Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction two centuries later. In his introduction to The Scarlet Letter, he avers to his seventeenth-century ancestors as bitter persecutors.
But if Nathaniel could win no solace from religion, his daughter, Rose, found peace becoming a Catholic nun and founded a women's religious order, The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, which to this day is dedicated to working with the sick and dying. Rose said that the strongest influence on his life was her father and the sympathy he consistently showed for those in poverty and disease.
The Birds have made an important contribution to understanding Nathaniel Hawthorne and the complex ideas that shaped him as one of the nineteenth-centuries greatest writers - and the conscience of his age.
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About the Author:
Otto Bird is a distinguished philosopher and author, who started the Great Books program at Notre Dame, and worked closely for years with Mortimer J. Adler on the Books Program and Encyclopaedia Britannica, and is the author of numerous books.
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- PublisherSt Augustine Pr Inc
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 1587312522
- ISBN 13 9781587312526
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages164
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From Witchery to Sanctity : The Religious Vicissitudes of the Hawthornes
Published by
St Augustine Pr Inc
(2004)
ISBN 10: 1587312522
ISBN 13: 9781587312526
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Hardcover
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Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 952425-n
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From Witchery to Sanctity (Hardcover)
Published by
St. Augustine's Press
(2005)
ISBN 10: 1587312522
ISBN 13: 9781587312526
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Hardcover
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. The remarkable history of the Hawthorne family, from its Puritan background through the skeptical, religiously tinged writings of one of America's greatest novelists, is told with vibrancy and color in From Witchery to Sanctity. The Birds show that religion, far more than other social qualities, shaped the outlook of the family's principles. Their religious thought dramatically affected, and was in turn itself affected by, the times in which they lived. From Puritanism, through Congregationalism and Unitarianism, and finally into Catholicism, the lives of the Hawthornes are woven by the Birds into a fabric that, in good part, tells the story of the founding and growth of the United States itself. Book jacket. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781587312526
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