Friendship of Hawthorne & Melville – Oro Valley Session

Details

When:

Where: Resurrection Lutheran Church

Cost: $115.00 4 sessions – includes reading packet

Type: In Person

Category:

• Humanities Courses
• Literature

Instructor: William A. Fry
William A. Fry

In an 1851 letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville wrote: “When the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning.” In his book, Double Lives: American Writers’ Friendships, Richard Lingerman puts forth the opinion that the friendship of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville is one of the most important in the nation’s literary history. It came at a crucial time in both men’s careers. Melville was writing Moby Dick and the success of Hawthorne’s recently published The Scarlet Letter had won him a long-delayed emergence from obscurity. Until Melville and Hawthorne published their great novels, there was no serious American literature.

These two giants of American literature met in August of 1850, at a picnic in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Their lives were changed forever. Join Dr. Bill Fry for a four-week exploration of this friendship and its impact on American literature.