Elements Of Romanticism In The Devil And Tom Walker

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In Washington Irving's story "The Devil and Tom Walker," the narrator Geoffrey Crayon personifies both the romantic aspect of the poem's nature which is gloomy but has romantic qualities and the devil, who is evil and dark. Mid-nineteenth-century Transcendentalism sparked the development of Dark Romanticism as a reaction. Dark Romanticism has a strong emphasis on the supernatural, on dark decaying environments and animals, and on evil characters that are prone to committing sins that will ultimately lead to their own demise.
The presence of the supernatural is the first aspect of Dark Romanticism that Irving included in "The Devil and Tom Walker." The story as a whole shows evidence of the supernatural, but one phrase in particular stood