As has been generally known, Hawthorne distinguished a Novel from a Romance, and declared himself "a romance-writer." This has occasioned some Hawthorne critics to quote certain passages included in the preface of The House of The Seven Gables, which is known to have a statement which serves to clarify the difference between the two. But this preface has served as making the critics more confused. One of them says it is "a kind of slippery evasiveness," and another, "The preface says nothing at all about why a writer might wish to depart from ordinary novelistic realism." But, if we critically reexamine this passage, we are lead to notice an important key to the understanding of an intimation Hawthorne himself has given concerning the Romance: firstly, Hawthorne allows, in the Romance, "The Marvellous" which cannot take place in everyday life. Therefore, it is inappropriate for us to understand the Romance solely from the viewpoint of the modern novel. Secondly, it is only in the case when "the truth of the human heart" does not deviate from the representation of the Romance. If we discuss it in a reverse way, the aim of writing a Romance is to represent "the truth of the human heart." Accordingly, if we further think about the problem from different angles, in terms of "The Custom House" prefixed to The Scarlet Letter, we can understand that the Romance is a category in which "the Actual" and "the Imaginary" can commingle and be assimilated with each other. If so, his idea of "the truth of the human heart" should be examined from both of the two sides. Hawthorne was a great lover of allegory, but within him lay commingled an anatomically and an abstractly conceived notion of the heart. This essay aims at inspecting the icon Hawthorne used in the literal creation of the idea of truth.
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