Abstract
This essay discusses the representation of New England's colonial past in the most re cent cinematic adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (185.0). Based on theoretical models developed by Renate Lachmann, this essay will show that the movie creates an effect of historicity in developing a web of intertextual references between the cinematic adaptation of The Scarlet Letter and a number of historical and literary documents. The intertextual structure of the film determines the cinematic recreation of the past and succeeds in simultaneously reconstructing different historical crises in American colonial history.
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston