Both Uses of
Old World
in
The Scarlet Letter
- It had been determined between them that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of New England or all America, with its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of Europeans scattered thinly along the sea-board.†
Chpt 20 *
- The children have come from their schools, and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy, for, to-day, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so—as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered—they make merry and rejoice: as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world!†
Chpt 21 *
Definitions:
-
(Old World) the regions of the world that were known to Europeans before the discovery of the Americas (the Eastern Hemisphere; i.e., Europe, Asia, and Africa)
- (meaning too rare to warrant focus)