As an extraordinary parable, quite a few researches have been done on "The Minister's Black Veil"。 In order to show how it has been variously studied, I generally classify these researches into two groups。 First, I will start with the symbolism of the black veil, which runs through the whole story。 Second, I will focus on the exertion of biblical archetypes。 As a master of symbolism and psychological description, it is characteristic for Hawthorne to use symbols and setting to reveal the psychology of the characters。 In "The Minister's Black Veil", the central symbol is the minister Hooper's black veil。 The fact that Hawthorne does not provide a conclusive and comprehensive explanation of Hooper's motivations and intentions of covering the black veil have led critics to engage in debating for over a century, resulting in many various theories and articles。 Some scholars, such as Austin Warren and Leland Schubert, center on Mr。 Hooper's motivations for donning the veil。 They think it is the terrible sins Mr。 Hooper must admit that drive him to such an extreme action。 Edgar Allan Poe argues that Mr。 Hooper commits a sexual sin with the young lady whose funeral Hooper conducts on the first day。 Robert D。 Crie asserts that Hooper fears women and uses the black veil as a means to shield himself from sexual encounters。 Other scholars claim that the focus of the story is not on what motivates Hooper to wear the black veil, but the effect of the black veil on the minister and his congregation。 Still other commentators discuss the importance of the veil as a symbol of the sins of humanity, noting its black color。 Second, the Bible has a great influence on Hawthorne。 When he is writing his works, consciously or unconsciously, he weaves the slender filaments that he draws from the Bible into his gorgeous web。 He transplants many a Biblical archetypes into his works, including "The Minister's Black Veil"。 In this short story, to the main character Mr。 Hooper, Hawthorne exerts the biblical archetype of Jesus。 文献综述

Hawthorne's ambiguous attitude towards Puritanism is well-known。 Randall Stewart describes Hawthorne's motto as there is no virtue without contradiction and conflict。 Emory Elliott thinks "Our Hawthorne is a figure not so much of ambiguity as of paradox and profound contradiction: a public recluse, openly and even sociably proclaiming his own isolation and alienation mild rebel, at once a conformist to the literary and social pieties of his day and an ironic underminer of these pieties。" (Columbia Literary History of The United States: 336) Herman Melville, in a 1850 critical review entitled "Hawthorne and His Mosses", claims that Hawthorne's Puritanism is inherent by appealing to "that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free。" ("Hawthorne and His Mosses")