Romanticism's Sublime Style in Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Billy Budd
"Sublime refers to an aesthetic value in which the primary factor is the presence or suggestion of transcendent vastness or greatness, as of power, heroism, extent in space or time"(Internet Encyclopedia). This essay will explore different levels of Romanticism's sublime style in Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Herman Melville's Billy Budd. The essay will particularly focus on how the writers incorporate the spiritual and the terror aspects of the sublime into their work.
American romanticism requires the wilds of nature to be the setting for the sublime. It is in this setting that the protagonist senses a conflict of good and evil. Even though the beautiful surroundings would suggests a pure serenity, the shadows in the beautiful setting reminds one that there is a dark side to nature. In each story there is an antagonist lurking about requiring the protagonist to choose his thinking - and ultimately his destiny. The antagonist in Billy Budd is Claggart, in The Legend of Sleepy Hallow, Brom Bones, and in Rip Van Winkle it could be a toss up between his nagging wife or the "company of odd-looking personages" he meets in the mountains.
Essentially it is Longinus, a first century philosopher, who is first credited with introducing the idea of the sublime into the arts (Weiskel 8). Longinus suggests five sources of sublimity in literature: "(1) the ability to conceive great thoughts, (2) intense emotion, (3) powerful figures of speech, (4) the choice of noble words, and (5) harmonious composition of sentences" (Kennedy, vol. 12). Each of Longinus? foundational sources for sublimity suggests an...
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...n Boulton 40).
Works Cited
Boulton, J. T. Burke?s Enquiry Into The Sublime And The Beautiful. New York: Columbia University, 1958.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 1997. University of Tennessee at Martin. 4 April 2001. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/sublime.htm.
Kennedy, George. "Longinus." The World Book Encyclopedia. 1985. Vol. 12:399.
Melville, Herman. "Billy Budd." Ed. Paul Lauther. The Heath Anthology of
American Literature. New York: Houghton 1998. 2512-2570.
Washington, Irving. "The Legend of Sleep Hallow." Ed. Paul Lauther. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. New York: Houghton 1998. 1354-1373.
-------- "Rip Van Winkle." Ed. Paul Lauther. The Heath Anthology of
American Literature. New York: Houghton 1998. 1342-1354.
Weiskel, Thomas. Romantic Sublime. Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1976.
Fifteen years separate Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown.” The two share an eerie connection because of the trepidation the two protagonists endure throughout the story. The style of writing between the two is not similar because of the different literary elements they choose to exploit. Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” chronicles Ichabod Crane’s failed courtship of Katrina Van Tassel as well as his obsession over the legend of the Headless Horseman. Hawthorne’s story follows the spiritual journey of the protagonist, Young Goodman Brown, through the woods of Puritan New England where he looses his religious faith. However, Hawthorne’s work with “Young Goodman Brown” is of higher quality than Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” because Hawthorne succeeds in exploiting symbols, developing characters, and incorporating worthwhile themes.
Irving, Washington. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The American Tradition in Literature. Vol 1. Eds. George Perkins, et al. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990: 544-563. 2 vols.
Burke, Edmund. "Proportion Further Considered". A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909-1917 (New York: Bartleby.com, 2001). http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/305.html
The controversy over whether or not violence portrayed on television actually affects children or not has been playing itself out for nearly three decades. When some of the first results came out in the 60s and 70s that made the first connections between aggressive behavior and viewing televised violence, the TV and movie industries denied that there was a connection. When studies found the same thing in the 80s, the FCC opposed any regulation (Hepburn). A writer for Direct Ma...
Irving Washington. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 5th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998. 948-69.
Washington Irving was a very ingenious writer; he did not express his stories with Romanticism but with something more creative and dark. Washington Irving has a big role for mood; his stories are creepy, mysterious, and evil. Irving’s stories reflect on the mood, a lot of his work had deep and evil thoughts. “T...
Snell, George, “Washington Irving: A Revelation.” The Shapers of American Fiction: 1798-1947, (1947). 105-16. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Dennis Poupard. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1982. 382-383.
Although at times it is easy to get carried away with the adventure of a story, noticing the elements a writer has put into his work is very important. In reading “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” you can see both similarities as well as differences of how both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving chose to illuminate their romantic writing styles. The writers both use a mystical woodsy setting with supernatural twists to draw in readers. Underlying you will find the differing romantic themes each writer used, as well as how each writer chose to end their work.
Thanks to the miracle of television the average American child watches 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence before finishing elementary school (Early Concerns 113). Television violence is responsible for the increase in childhood violence. Watching violence is a popular form of entertainment, and watching it on television is the number one way that children are exposed to violence. Local news shows provide extensive converage of violent crimes in order to increase their ratings (Felson 96). Violence usually refers to physical aggression and aggression is usually defined as any behavior involving intent to harm another person (Sege 34).
When families sit down to watch television, they expect to watch family type of shows. Family type shows meaning rated PG or PG13, sitcoms and movies that do not include weapons, killing, foul language, and non-socially accepted actions. When children killing, they start to believe that it is accepted. Do children think that killing and hurting others and themselves have little meaning to the real life, children can become traumatized. Most killers or violators of the law blame their behavior on the media, and the way that television portrays violators. Longitudinal studies tracking viewing habits and behavior patterns of a single individual found that 8-year-old boys, who viewed the most violent programs growing up, were the most likely to engage in aggressive and delinquent behavior by age 18 and serious criminal behavior by age 30 (Eron, 1). Most types of violence that occur today links to what people see on television, act out in video games or cyberspace games, or hear in music. Media adds to the violence that exists today and in the past few decades. It will continue in the future if it is not recognized as a possible threat to our society. When kids go to a movie, watch television, play video games or even surf the web, they become part of what they see and hear. Soaking violence in their heads long enough becomes a part of the way they think, acts, and live. The line between pretend and reality gets blurred.
Graham, Daniel W. "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2014
What can be said about the sublime? Class discussion led to the definition of sublime as the element found in travel literature that is unexplainable. It is that part of travel literature where the writer is in awe of his or her surroundings, where nature can be dangerous or where nature reminds a human being of their mortality. The term "sublime" has been applied to travel texts studied in class and it is hard not to compare the sublime from texts earlier in the term to the texts in the later part of the term. Two texts that can be compared in terms of the sublime are A Tour in Switzerland by Helen Williams and History of a Six Weeks' Tour by Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley. There are similarities and differences found in both texts concerning individual perspectives of travel and the sublime. The main focus of this commentary will be comparing and contrasting the perspectives of Williams and Shelley within their respective texts, the language of the sublime and the descriptions of the sublime.
Romanticism and Transcendentalism are both literary movements that were appreciated in the American literature. Both movements are quite similar; however, Romanticism is a strong motivational force that depicted emotions, patriotism, and imagination. Dark Romanticism, on the other hand, is a branch of Romanticism that focuses on the evil qualities of the man. Not only it is a branch of Romanticism, however, it is a reaction of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism focuses on self-realization, empowering the connection between man and nature, and the goodness of man and nature. Throughout the years, American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe projected dark romantic features in their work, “Young Goodman Brown” and “Tell-Tale Heart”, where they show the conflict between the good and evil. However, Emerson portrayed transcendentlistic characteristics in his book “Nature” as he shows the power of knowledge, nature, and divinity.
"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Beauvoir, Simone de []. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. .
In conclusion, the sublime and the beautiful are major topics in romantic poems and novels. Different authors bring out the different ways they can be seen and interpreted. In the novel Frankenstein and the poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, the sublime and the beautiful are shown through the feelings and the mind of the main characters. In the poem “Mont Blanc,” the sublime is shown through the complexity of nature and how man will never truly be able to understand it. In order to have something beautiful there must be something sublime, and in order for they’re to be something sublime there must be something beautiful.