Nathaniel Hawthorne's status as an artist rests as much on The Scarlet Letter as on his short
fictions. It is both telling and appropriate that academic research in the short story should
be dated to Mary Rohrberger's study Hawthorne and the Modern Short Story published in 1966.
The present volume adds to this discourse with contributions by Paulina Ambrozy Katarzyna
Kuczma Joseph Kuhn David Malcolm Marek Paryz Janusz Semrau Pawel Stachura and Marek
Wilczynski. Represented here are some of the most widely-known stories such as «My Kinsman
Major Molineux» «Wakefield» «Roger Malvin's Burial» «Ethan Brand» «The Great Stone Face»
and some of the less widely-known ones such as «Legends of the Province-House» «The Haunted
Mind» «The Threefold Destiny» «Foot-prints on the Sea-shore». The individual essays discuss
Hawthorne's texts in quasi-generic terms through some persistent American themes and motifs
as well as for their aesthetic philosophical and existential meanings. The readings draw
ideological and theoretical support from the thought of Emerson Hegel Trilling de Certeau
Freud Heidegger Lacan and Derrida.
