The Office of The Scarlet Letter

by Sacvan Bercovitch

'The Office Of The Scarlet Letter' provides a theoretical redefinition of the function of symbolism in culture; it also provides an exemplary literary-ideological reading of a major American text.

Genres: Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Sacvan Bercovitch was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. He received his B.A. at Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) in 1958, and his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) in 1965. Bercovitch taught at Brandeis, the University of California-San Diego, Princeton, and at Columbia from 1970 to 1984. From 1984 until he retired in 2001 he taught at Harvard, where he held the Powell M. Cabot Professorship in American Literature.

Reviews

[Carmen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated everything about this book.

[Robert Zaslavsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is valuable, especially in the early sections. Unfortunately, the promise that it shows never delivers fully because Bercovitch loses the political focus that would have clarified the novel more fully by indulging in quasi-philosophical and metatheoretic excrescences. The first three chapters contain the heart of the analysis. Chapter four and the Postscript are an unnecessary digression that prevents a full and proper conclusion from being reached and leaves a muddier interpretation than was latent in the earlier chapters.

[Molly Bernard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A reread for me some 20 odd years since the first.