Abstract
At the time when romanticism was at its height in America, such writers as Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier were making their influence felt. |Prom these authors the writer has chosen Nathaniel Hawthorne as the subject of her study. This author was selected, not for his pre-eminence as a Romantic writer, but on account of the peculiar style of his writing, which sets him apart from other writers of his time. This is the specific ”Hawthornesque" touch, an element of the preternatural which pervades his work as a leit motif. |Unlike the natural, which is an act of perfection that is owing to the nature of the being, and again unlike the supernatural, which is taken to mean that which is not only not owing to nature, but which also elevates nature to a higher order of being and action, the preternatural means that which is not owing to nature, but which, if given to nature, simply perfects the natural order and operation, but does not elevate them to anything higher.