nathanielhawthorne, the pioneer of the american psychoanalysis fiction and the firstwriter of short story in the history of american literature, is known as therepresentative romantic novelist in the 19th century. his literary worksinclude five completed novels like the scarlet letter and more than onehundred short stories such as young goodman brown and rappaccini’sdaughter. with the influence of social environment, family background andlife experiences, his literary works reflect a strong flavor of puritanideology in which original sin plays a core role in ethics. saint augustine isthe fundamental theologian in the formulation of original sin, initiating fromthe story about adam and eve in the bible. they disobey god’s will to eat thefruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. as a punishment, theyare prohibited from eating from the tree of life and driven out of eden; andthen humanity is cursed to have original sin since human beings are thedescendents of adam and eve. hawthorne has been committed to reveal the mentaldegradation and darkness of human and society, warning people to face intrinsicevil in order to realize the change of mind and the social reform.

accordingto the researched literature materials, no matter domestic or abroad, themajority of the studies on hawthorne’s writing focus on his classic and famousnovels from diverse traditional perspectives, such as original sin, feminism,structuralism, psychology and so on. however, his short stories are actually worthy of more studying as well,such as rappaccini’s daughter, the birthmark, doctorheidegger’s experiment and the red carbuncle, which all have a greatrelationship to original sin and hawthorne poses a negative attitude towardsscience and showing the mental degradation of human.

there have been many papers or articles on the study of rappaccini’sdaughter. for example, in edward a. abramson’s article, he makes a contrastbetween nathaniel hawthorne's rappaccini's daughter and bernardmalamud's the lady of the lake from the perspective of comparing gardensand edens, and he emphasizes that the complexities of plot, theme, andcharacter are developed in relation to the garden settings. in liu wenyang’sarticles, he exemplifies that the poison of beatrice symbolizes the originalsin and reflects man’s secret evils, and that the story is an allegory of acouple of lovers in a fallen garden, which is the image has rich implications,as new adam and eve in eden.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

as one of nathaniel hawthorne's classicshort stories, rappaccini's daughter perfectly displays his thoughts onthe original sin. this paper mainly focuses on the analysis of beatrice'stragic death as well as the inner torment of people around her, hoping toexplain on what sense hawthorne is deeply haunted by the calvinist puritanismand its great effect upon his writings together with american literature.

on the basis of textual study, thegeneral points will be the following: firstly, since original sin is asignificant term in this paper, the well-known formulation of original singiven by saint augustine and the religiousbackground of original sin are introduced. secondly, the characters withoriginal sin in the story are elaborately analyzed, including rappaccini andoriginal sin, baglion and original sin; in this part, the causes of beatrice'stragic death and what people around beatrice suffer in their inner world arealso explored. finally, this paper mentions the influence of hawthorne’soriginal sin on his writing, which has a profound inspiration on americanliterature.

this paper aims to analyze original sinin hawthorne's rappaccini's daughter and the author will consultbibliographies of the respective studies of original sin and the textualanalysis on rappaccini's daughter from some other perspectives, so as toprovide an elaborate and exhaustive description of original sin in rappaccini'sdaughter.

3. 研究计划与安排

before 26th, december: settlement of the title

before 25th, february: submission of the outline

before 25th, april: submission of the first draft

4. 参考文献（12篇以上）

[1] abramson, e. a.gardens and edens: nathaniel hawthorne's "rappaccini's daughter" andbernard malamud's "the lady of the lake." [j]. studies in shortfiction, 2012 (1):27-42.

[2] hawthorne n. rappaccini'sdaughter [m]. booklassic, 2015.

[3] hill-stanford h.hawthorne in eden [j]. 2015.