Talk:Hawthorne and His Mosses

Priority ranking: Low
This essay is a very famous and important one. Probably no anthology of American literature can afford to omit it. It has also been much reprinted in anthologies of Melville's writings, from The Portable Melville (edited by Jay Leyda) of the 1940s till the most recent Tales, Poems, and Other Writings (edited by John Bryant) from 2001. Scholars have been studying it intensely, for what it reveals about:
 * 1) Melville's view of the relation of American letters versus British literature at the time he wrote Moby-Dick;
 * 2) Melville's view of himself as an author;
 * 3) the Hawthorne-Melville relationship. For this reason, thorough analyses of the essay can be found in biographies of Melville as well as of Hawthorne.

Within the context of Melville studies, this essay is ranked Top-importance: Walter Bezanson called it "everybody's prime piece of contextual reading", the context being the composition of Moby-Dick. The more general literary context in which Wikipedia ranking takes place would perhaps place it slightly lower, at High-importance: "Subject is very notable or significant within its field of literature", which description applies to a staple of American literature anthologies. But assessing it as Low is really off the mark, because the criteria for Low read: "not particularly notable or significant even within the field of literature, and may have been included primarily to achieve comprehensive coverage of a notable author or other notable subject." These criteria cannot be found on WikiProject_Literature but I found them on the Novels Project page. I thought I put them here for everyone's convenience. Cheers MackyBeth (talk) 18:12, 2 June 2016 (UTC).


 * I agree with this comment. I've re-assessed it to "mid" importance. I think this is closer to the mark. I'm not sure it merits higher ranking, but I leave that to others. --Midnightdreary (talk) 12:03, 3 August 2016 (UTC)