1. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance (1852)

• Communal societies in the U. S. and their role during the 1840s

• Louisa May Alcott’s “Transcendental Wild Oats” as a critique of that kind of male idealism

• Emerson and Thoreau; transcendentalism more generally

• The romance as a genre, and Hawthorne’s use of it/critique of it; Hawthorne’s theories of romance

• The “cult of true womanhood” and the ways in which it operates in The Blithedale Romance

• The “dark lady”/ “blonde” woman (Philip Rahv) in Blithedale

• Obsessive idealism

• The figure of the artist; the role of personas, drama, and masks in The Blithedale Romance

• Nineteenth-century theories of criminology (Serena’s report)

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