Anthony Storr's The Adventure Of The German Student

English Psychiatrist, Anthony Storr, once said that, “Originality implies being bold enough to go beyond accepted norms.” In everyday life, ideas and art that play by the ideas of typical “norms” do not stand out like new ideas and perspectives. During the Age of Enlightenment in the1800’s, most authors created literature pertaining to logical facts and reason. This was a very non-expressive, rational epoch that made imaginative artists stand out. As many new world events were taking place during these ages, Romantic artists developed unique ways to express the changes around them and how it made them felt unlike anyone else. Romanticism was an new, artistic movement in which artist’s works were mirror images of their own characters; It represented

The similarities of artists and their own work makes art interesting to read. In the story, The Adventure of The German Student, the author is describing a student that mysteriously had an, “evil influence” hanging over him, just like a, “spirit seeking to ensnare him and ensure his perdition” (Irving). This whole story is a dark lifeline of Wolfgang, who like Irving himself, who’s been known to possess different, mysterious qualities. Brian Jay Jones, the biography writer, teaches us that unlike a lot of the students in his school, Irving was, “more interested in pulp adventure novels,” and left school with only a, “only a passable knowledge of grammar, punctuation and spelling.” Irving, like many other romantic authors, was an outcast in

Just like Edgar Allen Poe created mirror images of himself in his work, for some of his readers, they could share similar emotions he felt, and connect to his work themselves. There are some people today that, “All [they] lov’d, [they] lov’d alone” (Poe). Poe expresses that he felt this way in his reflective poem, Alone, in a way that readers that have felt lonely or are outcasts can level with. A contributing factor to Romanticism becoming such a big movement was that unlike the books of science and logic that quantitatively explained processes of life such as most literature did in the Age of Enlightenment, people would read romantic literature and feel a connection in their hearts that simply could not be measured with numbers. Additionally, an audience that felt they had a, “secluded life,”or an, “intense application,” that, “had an effect on both [their] mind and body,” like many students these days, could empathize with Gottfried Wolfgang in Irving’s, The Adventure Of The German Student. It is important that many of the readers can apply this to their life because the actions that later follow the initial causes of Wolfgang’s insanity may be a somewhat stretched representation of how they feel inside at some points of their lives. If some one’s studies impairs their health or causes their imagination to become, “Diseased,” then