The American Novel and Its Tradition

I bought this book to aid in the writing of a paper on Hawthorne. I have always liked literature criticism books by a single author because you can return to them as a source for other information and be able to count on the style and the type of content the author will give. The Hawthorne section in this book gives an examination of the allegorical quality of "The Scarlet Letter" as well as a good focus on the main characters and their own existence as singular representations: "Chillingworth, the probing intellect; Dimmesdale, the moral sensibility; Pearl, the unconscious or demonic poetic faculty. Hester is the fallible human reality . . .". It also points to aspects of the book such as the two intense scaffold scenes. I found Richard Chase's book to be very helpful. His criticism is not too far 'out there' like some often are. I came across other articles by him in my research and he always seems to be able to probe deeply into the hidden meanings and sort out the individualities of the characters without losing the reader. I would recommend this book because of a general familiarity with Richard Chase's work and also because I found the Hawthorne section to be extremely helpful in my own research.