Abstract of thesis entitled "Negative Faith: Disbelief in God in Literature". Submitted by Chow, Man San, M-A9-5557-1, for the degree of Master of Arts in English Studies at University of Macau in June 2016 The concept of God is a fundamental component in literary criticism, with regard, for example, to American Transcendentalism and Puritanism, and also to the nature of literature. God's interaction with His believers had come into doubt; whether miracles happen depends on what people experienced, not their encounter with God. This thesis focuses on the exploration of selected works from three writers the novel Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), the poetry by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) and the short story Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) -- in the late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Some works from the three writers have a similarity in the way that they question the existence of God, and are set against the major religious beliefs, though with different approaches. The disbelief in God is intermingled with some elements of the plots, the poetic images and the behavior of characters, respectively, in the said three works. This thesis will explore: 1) the authors' purpose of marginalizing the existence of God, 2) their response to their faith and the major religious beliefs in the contemporary social and political climate, as there are similarities in their views, even though the two male authors and one female author are not uniform in gender, 3) the motif of the changes from writing text transmitting "thoughts of God" to "thoughts of Nature" / "thoughts of Human' and 4) the contributions the authors have brought to the development of literature. Keywords: Charles Brockden Brown, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Religion and Literature, Individualism, Transcendentalism, Puritanism