Reflection: R.V.W and Irving

Rip Van Winkle and The Devil of Tom Walker are both examples of romanticism writing.  According to my literary criticism, romanticism is not just being romantic (lovey-dovey), but it includes one's individual aspect of being center of life and having thought of individual thought and response. It also includes a sympathetic view of what has already happened, the past, mysticism, etc (Werlock).  The biggest mysticism example is when Rip Van Winkle falls asleep after drinking the liquor from the keg (Irving Rip paragraph 25). This keg had been given to him by a stranger.  When he woke up, everything was different.  He slept through the American Revolution.  He had not experienced anything that went on for the past twenty years.  He had seen a sign of George Washington as the new leader, where King George the Third had been the king when he went to sleep (Irving Rip paragraph 33).  It is mysterious because he had slept for twenty years, over some mysterious drink that had been given to him (Irving Rip paragraph 19).
"The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghost, witches, and Indians" (Irving). As I will get to later on in my blog, both males in their stories, are quite childish in their ways, which is a characteristic of romanticism.  Here, Rip is doing nothing with his life and is playing with children which drives his wife crazy.
Between the two stories they do share one same thing that stands out right away.  They both do not like their wives, and they believe that they are very nagging. In The Devil of Tom Walker, "However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife, so he flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction"( Irving 246). Here Tom does the exact opposite of what he is told to do.
One of the most important descriptions or qualities of romanticism writing is the description that is used in the stories.  They go out of their way to give you a very descriptive detail of the surroundings, which I like about this writing style.  A perfect example is right when The Devil of Tom Walker starts off. "A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet, winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove, on the opposite side the land rise abruptly from the water's edge into a high ridge, on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size" (Irving 242).  He is very descriptive right out of the book and goes into detail about the surroundings.  You would not find this in any other style of writing which is unique about romanticism.

Irving, Washington. "Rip Van Winkle." Bartleby.com. Web. 06 Dec. 2011.

Irving, Washington. "The Devil and Tom Walker." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 240-250. Print.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "Romanticism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 06 Dec. 2011.