Sacvan Bercovitch, Stanley Cavell, and the Romance Theory of American Fiction

Two questions posed by recent developments in literary theory are whether a tradition of American romance fiction exists and, if so, whether we want to continue to define it in the terms that have prevailed in literary criticism over the last thirty-five years. After briefly reviewing some features of the contemporary conversation concerning the theory of American romance, this essay puts into play two important figures in that conversation—Sacvan Bercovitch and Stanley Cavell—in an attempt to develop a new interpretive model for romance fiction. Finally, through certain of Cavell's ideas about Emerson, the essay reads a moment in Hawthorne'sScarlet Letter, which is crucial to Bercovitch's recent reinterpretation of the book, and attempts to clarify what, perhaps, constitutes the enduring power of the romance tradition.