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Gothic elements in poe's work
The value of Gothic literature
Edgar allan poe as a gothic writer
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Gothic elements in poe's work
The value of Gothic literature
Edgar allan poe as a gothic writer
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Romanticism is a type of story that finds inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture. Following this principle, Washington Irving has written many stories about romanticism. These stories include, “The Devil and Tom Walker” and “Rip Van Winkle. Irving’s stories, “The Devil and Tom Walker, and “Rip Van Winkle” both show traits of romanticism because they both include the supernatural realm, youthful innocence over sophistication, shunning civilization, and folk culture.
Rip was described as a simple easy going man and the people that lived in the village adore him because of his Kindness, generosity, and willingness to help his neighbors, but his wife is not happy with him because he is also a very lazy husband he doesn’t work around the house. Washington Irving’s national mythology "Rip Van Winkle” greatly impacts its reader through
Pitiful Ichabod and his scrawny horse are the opposite of the usual strong hero and his handsome steed portrayed in the typical Romanticism literature of Irving’s day. Washington Irving pokes fun at Romanticism by making a ridicules “knight” who is unable to defeat the “monster”, or win the hand of his girl. The frightening “headless horseman” encounter that Ichabod experiences is an example of an imagination gone wild when there was a perfectly rational explanation. Why would Washington Irving want to poke fun of Romanticism? He did this in order to create a story that would give the reader the opportunity to laugh.
Rip was free to come and go as he pleased. Irving did not only describe Rip as a man who loves his freedom, but Rip’s children were also described as “ragged and wild”. With Rip roaming in the woods and doing as he pleased, he finds these odd characters in the
Gothic literature is a style of literature that takes place in the past, most of the time it has someone who dies and it has a creepy vibe/tone behind it . Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is a good example of Gothic literature because it shows how a man goes to visit an old friend and see how his friend and his friends twin sister die. “The whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day. ”(13)
Did your parents ever read to you as a child? Were you read stories of magical events, strange characters, or even exciting places? Whether you were or not, all three of these things can be found in the short story “Rip Van Winkle” written by Washington Irving. In this essay I will explain how Washington Irving incorporates these three characteristics into the story. I will also be explaining the impact these characteristics have on reader’s experience of the story.
Gothic Literature is a genre that was popular between 18th to 19th centuries in North Germany. It is always being associated with Dark Romanticism which the emphasize was more on nature, terror and death, horror and many more. It involves dark and gloomy setting and also unexplainable things that are beyond human senses and reason such as ghosts and monsters. The main characters, on the other hand, are always ineffectual which they do not give much effect on the story plot. This can be seen through Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” which can be considered as American gothic work in terms of its description of setting, the involvement of supernatural element in the story and also the characteristics of the main character.
Irving does a great job interpreting the time of radical, societal and political transformation that came up because of the American Revolution through this story. The story is based on two essential segments during that time period focused on before Rip fell asleep and after he woke up. The time period before Rip falls asleep, he struggles with managing his family and farm. He does everything he can to stay away from his nagging wife. His marriage was in trouble as Irving stated “Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener by constant use” (32).
American Mythology Washington Irving features many characteristics in his short story “Rip Van Winkle,” for instance the way he illustrates, a man who doesn’t even focus on his family or farm. When Irving suggests, “He would never even refuse to assist a neighbor in the roughest toil…but as to doing family duty and keeping his farm in order, it was impossible (64).” The quote indicates a fantastic status of Rip that he neglected his everyday responsibilities to accommodate others in the community. It stated that it was impossible, but every one of us understood it's not impossible for Rip because he could just emphasis further on his family than to help other people in the community.
During the 1800s Dark Romanticism, sometimes referred to as Gothic Romanticism, entered the world of literature. Unlike the writings before this time, Dark Romanticism showed the sinful thoughts that had not been previously shown in the world. Unlike the previous fiction stories or novels such as fairytales that used creative, positive stories to escape reality, these dark and sometimes supernatural writings eluded reality by taking its readers into disturbing and sometimes sacrilegious situations. Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne both used symbols to illustrate elements of Dark Romanticism. The symbols within the stories of these great writers revealed the impending darkness and gloom that characterized Dark Romanticism.
Gothic Elements in the “The Tell Tale Heart” The classic short story of “The Tell-Tale Heart”, written by one of the all time masters of horror, Edgar Allen Poe, has always been used as an excellent example of Gothic fiction. Edgar Allen Poe specialized in the art of gothic writing and wrote many stories that portrayed disturbing events and delved deeply into the minds of its characters. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe revolves the plot around a raving individual who, insisting that he is sane, murders an old man because of his` “vulture eye”. The three main gothic elements that are evident in this story are the unique setting, the theme of death and decay, and the presence of madness.
The story of “Rip Van Winkle”, by Washington Irving, is of a quite unconcerned man whom takes a lengthy nap. Rip lives an ordinary life and busies himself with mundane activities, such as fishing all day with no bites and doing odd jobs for his neighbors. One day, he wonders into the Catskill Mountains to go hunting, falls asleep on a knoll, and does not awake for twenty years. Rip’s epic nap is a metaphor for political apathy and passivity in public and personal life. He awakes to a completely new world, which has undergone tumultuous changes, including that of his wife’s death.
In novels focusing on parody of European attributes of romanticism Washington Irving created the unexampled masterpieces. “Rip Van Winkle” being one of the unexampled works of Washington Irving combines gentle and perfect humor. This story is Irving’s imaginative reworking of an old German tale in which his valuable parody professionally covered. In the story Washington Irving gave the national shade to the description of events and outlandish beings for America.
Gothic Romanticism is a genre of literature that combines fiction, horror, the supernatural and romance, popular in the 18th and 19th century. It was introduced by an English author named Horace Walpole. He incorporated this genre through a novel published in 1764, “The Castle of Otranto” which was subtitled, “A Gothic Novel”. The term gothic was originally used to describe art and a form of architecture at the time. Terror, mystery, paranormal activity, doom and death were the main features of gothic novels during the era of gothic romanticism.
In the early 18th century a new genre of fiction prose, named "Gothic Novel" was introduced. The term ”Gothic” used to refer to the German tribe of the Goths. The Gothic novel spread over the 19th century and had the popular theme of haunted places such as castles, crypts, gloomy monasteries; supernatural elements having the role to intensify the atmosphere. The characteristic motifs of the gothic genre were the strange places, the supernatural, magic objects, monsters, demons, science used for bad purposes. And many of them appear also in "The Picture of Dorian Gray".