Linguistic and Conceptual Aspects in Construing Brotherhood in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s „Blithedale Romance”
Linguistic and Conceptual Aspects in Construing Brotherhood in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s „Blithedale Romance”

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to analyze how the concept of brotherhood is constructed throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel Blithedale Romance, in the context of a utopian community that seeks to be an example against the commercialism and ordinariness that characterize ordinary urban existence. The atmosphere that drives the characters to revolt is that of the second phase of the industrial revolution in America, a context that drives them to leave Boston and move to the outskirts of the city, in an attempt to find, in the way they decide to live their lives here, the noble values of a simple and pure existence in the midst of nature. In this article, we focus on combining linguistic aspects with cultural references, which portray the concept of brotherhood as a characteristic of the newly established community. We attempt to select relevant contexts from the novel to illustrate a progression from an optimistic, hopeful vision of the Blithedale project, initially seen as a self-sufficient agrarian community, to a downright pessimistic one, marked by disillusionment not only with the project itself, but also with the human race and life in general. The method of analysis is a combination of linguistics, pragmatics, and cultural and identity studies.

• Details
• Contents