Art at the Service of Progress in The Marble Faun

Main Article Content

Raquel Blave Gómez

Abstract

Contrary to what we read in Hawthorne’s previous books, little is discussed about the
dichotomy novel vs. romance in the preface to The Marble Faun. Art, a key subtext in the
story, is more powerfully introduced than the novel /romance issue. Nevertheless, the
word romance appears directly in the title of the book, The Romance of Monte Beni, turning
the genre issue into one of the structuring principles of the text while diverting the
readers’ /critics’ attention to art itself. In general, Hawthorne’s texts present an artist as
the main character, an artist with whom the author himself empathizes. The Marble Faun
narrates the lives in Rome of three artists and of Donatello, who is said to strongly


resemble Praxiteles’ Faun. This article will contend that Hawthorne uses art and his own
way of writing in The Marble Faun to show the need for progress in 19th-century North
America.

Article Details

Section

Literatura

How to Cite

Art at the Service of Progress in The Marble Faun. (2019). VERBEIA. Revista De Estudios Filológicos. Journal of English and Spanish Studies, 5(4), 153-172. https://doi.org/10.57087/Verbeia.2019.4062

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