Abstract:Through their reflections on Westminster Abbey, Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne explore questions about the place of an American author on the world stage. Irving’s positions the past as subservient to the present, probably as a result of America’s newly re-established independence from the mother country after the War of 1812. Hawthorne’s sketches on English life, on the other hand, depict the past not as fading into oblivion but as immortal, a stance that perhaps reflects America’s struggle for sel… Show more
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