“A Triumph of the Gaze over the Eye”: Gaze in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints

Journal: Arts Studies and Criticism DOI: 10.32629/asc.v5i5.3088

Yiming Wang

University of Science & Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China

Abstract

Situated in a relatively claustrophobic environment, both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints traces the dynamics between particular individuals and the community as a whole. Using the concept of “gaze” as a key, and employing Foucault and Lacan’s theorization concerning that concept, this essay seeks to unravel the struggle characters in both novels go through, and argue that while Lives of the Saints hangs in an irresolvable liminal space on its way breaking out of the Semiotic into the Symbolic, the history, The Scarlet Letter is a journey from the Symbolic into the Real, where ego could rest unhurt beyond any sense of lack.

Keywords

gaze, psychoanalysis, The Scarlet Letter, Lives of the Saints

References

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