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Is Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance chiefly the story of Hollingsworth and his unsuccessful philanthropic scheme, or the story of Zenobia and her tangled relations with Hollingsworth, Priscilla, Westervelt, and Old Moodie, or the story of Coverdale, the cold observer, or the story of the Blithedale experiment? Any of these candidates could be defended. Hollingsworth has the strongest effect upon the plot, and Hawthorne originally intended to name the novel after him; Zenobia is the most vivid character, and her story receives even more space than Hollingsworth's; Coverdale is the character whom we know most intimately; and although Hawthorne prefatorially states that his description of the communal farm “is altogether incidental to the main purpose of the romance,” his remarks about Blithedale's purpose, operation, and failure constitute an evaluation of the Brook Farm experiment. Yet none of these sub-plots clearly dominates the rest. Unless some principle of unity holds them together, Blithedale is at best a noble failure; until we are aware of this principle of unity, we cannot read the novel with satisfaction.

One can hardly complain that too few scholars have examined the influence of John Bunyan upon Nathaniel Hawthorne. George Parsons Lathrop's A Study of Hawthorne and F. O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance give excellent if brief discussions, each of which identifies several of Hawthorne's allusions to the English allegorist. The most detailed examination is W. Stacy Johnson's “Hawthorne and The Pilgrim's Progress,” in which Johnson, after establishing Hawthorne's familiarity with The Pilgrim's Progress, points out several allusions to it in the short stories and romances, discusses Bunyan's influence upon Hawthorne's allegorical techniques, and concludes that “The Pilgrim's Progress is a major source and inspiration for the art of Hawthorne.”

CYSTIC fibrosis is a genetic disease transmitted as an autosomal recessive trait. The disease is mainly found in Caucasians.1 The statistical data of the National Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundatio...

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http://archive.org/details/astudyofperforma109456574 U.S. Navy (U.S.N.) author. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.