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"Death possesses a good deal of real estate": references to gravestones and burial grounds in Nathaniel Hawthorne's American Notebooks and selected fictional works.(Critical essay)

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From: Studies in the Literary Imagination
Date: 20060322
Author:Meyer, Richard E.

INTRODUCTION

Were one to ask the average reader which classic American writer most frequently employed references to gravestones and burial grounds, the answer most probably would be Edgar Allan Poe. This is perhaps natural, given the several celebrated instances of mortuary symbolism and setting found in Poe's work as well as his general reputation as an author of the macabre. It is not Poe, however, but rather his literary contemporary Nathaniel Hawthorne whose work is most heavily steeped in such references. This tendency to employ headstones and graveyards--often real ...

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