The Marble Faun: or, The Romance of Monte Beni (Penguin Classics)
Novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1860. The novel's central metaphor is a statue of a faun by Praxiteles that Hawthorne had seen in Florence. In the faun's fusing of animal and human characteristics he finds an allegory of the fall of man from amoral innocence to the knowledge of good and evil, a theme that had usually been assumed in his earlier works but that now received direct and philosophic treatment.  The faun of the novel is Donatello, a passionate young Italian who makes the acquaintance of three American artists, Miriam, Kenyon, and Hilda, who are spending time in Rome. When Donatello kills a man who has been shadowing Miriam, he is wracked by guilt until he is arrested by the police and imprisoned. Both of the women are tainted by guilt.   --The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.