John Updike, S

M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo (Universidad Isabel I)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1988

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Perhaps because some readers of Roger's Version failed to see the novel's connection with The Scarlet Letter, the third and final novel in John Updike's “The Scarlet Letter Trilogy”, S., opens with two quotations taken from The Scarlet Letter. The first quotation refers to Hester's physical description – “she had dark and abundant hair, … how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.” This is a physical description with a spiritual component – she has a halo, almost as if she were a saint. The following quotation (“much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance that her life …

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1726 words

Citation: Gomez-Galisteo, M. Carmen. "S". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 October 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12963, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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