. . . . .汉口学院本科毕业论文（设计）开题报告表院（系）名称 外 国 语 学 院 专业名称 英 语 年 级 2009 级 学生姓名 肖 静 静 学 号 2009932125 指导教师姓名 刘 丽 填表时间： 2012 年 12月24 日拟选题目Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter选题依据及研究意义The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt. Hawthorne is a famous romantic novelist of the 19th century, he was adept at using romantic imagination, symbolism, a plenty of moral subjective color and Psychological analysis to explore the inner world of the characters and present the theme. In his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne makes full advantages of those language skills. Most importantly, symbolism is throughout the whole novel and has varieties meaning. So, Hawthorne is regarded as a pioneer of the modern symbolism literary. This thesis briefly focuses on analyzing those symbolisms in The Scarlet Letter. Symbolism is a kind of speech which depends on the inner link of two things, uses some specific images to present abstract concepts, thoughts and emotions. Symbolism plays a very important role in literary writing. It brings a lofty significance to the article and makes the article have a subtle and profound theme.This thesis concentrates on the application of symbolism in The Scarlet Letter, which is regarded as the major writing characteristic in the novel. We can find symbolism in the change meaning of “A”, in the symbol of the name of the characters, in the meaning of the scenes. It is no doubt that only by analyzing those symbolism in detail, can we have a overall sense of the theme and get a better understanding of symbolism.选题的研究现状The Scarlet Letter is the first novel of Hawthorne, after the book advent in 1850, Hawthorne became fame and recognized as the most important writer at that time. Further, Hawthorne called his “romance” as “psychological romance”, this is enough shows that Hawthorne had paid much attention to psychological description, the reason why he attach much importance to psychological description is that: on one hand, he was affected by the times and religious, confused with the spirit and the soul, he thought since the soul have good and evil, love and hate, and have sins, they are should be revealed so as to punishing evil and promoting virtue, awarding love and suppressing hate. But on the other hand, peoples psychological depend on peoples behavior, if we not analyze the characters psychological we cannot understand the inner of the character, we will inevitably seemed superficial. For readers who are accustomed to reading our traditional techniques to draw characters, they may feel The story rhythm is too slow, but he is the originator of the American psychological novels. After so many years, the book always under worship, the critics never stopped concerning about this novel. The Scarlet Letter is now recognized as an immortal masterpieces, Hawthorne also received a high rating.The Scarlet Letter is an 1850 romantic work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Massachusetts during the years 1642 to 1649, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.In domestic, many scholars have deeply researched The Scarlet Letter, some analyzed its theme from the perspective of the society background and story Structure, some focus their research on how women pursuing marriage and amour under that society setting, some scholars pay attention to the symbolism used in the novel, but, a majority of scholars put main energy on analyzing the psychology, character, image of the hero and heroin in The Scarlet Letter, by analyzing the humanity of the three main characters, we can understand the abominable influence on humanity resulted from Puritanism. In our country, there are many works about researching the scarlet letter. For example, Hawthornes feminist thought reflected on Hester Prynne written by Cheng ShuHua. Paltiel guli Isaacs work from Chinese feminist literary criticism perspective view Hester Prynnes image in The Scarlet Letter.Foreign scholars have a longer history in researching Hawthorne, in the early 1836, Parker Benjamin published the first a