WebQuest: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance
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Overview: In
this WebQuest, you will explore sites related to Hawthorne’s The
Blithedale Romance as well as related sites about the Brook Farm
Community and the Utopian movement. First you will read resources that will
give you some general information about the Brook Farm experiment. This is
the model that Hawthorne uses to create his fictional account of the utopian
communities. The Hive at Brook Farm à |
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Step
1: Explore Utopian Communities in nineteenth-century America.
Learn about utopian communities, which were big in nineteenth-century
America. Then explore information about Fruitlands,
the utopian community founded by Bronson Alcott. Read about Brook Farm and look at a map of the community.
Step 2:
Explore Hawthorne’s life and work.
Explore Hawthorne’s
childhood home at the Hawthorne
in Salem Website.
You can also
learn about The Wayside (Hawthorne’s Home in Concord).
You can learn
more about Hawthorne’s life and work at The Nathaniel
Hawthorne Page.
Finally, take
some time to learn a little bit about the famous friendship between
Hawthorne and Melville.
Step 3: Learn about Hawthorne’s fictional account of the utopian community
movement.
Read Henry James's comments on Hawthorne’s stay at Brook
Farm.
For
further research, see the Selected Bibliography at Donna Campbell’s
Gonzaga University site.
For
a humorous take, see Edgar Allan Poe’s “How To Write a Blackwood Article.”