ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
American Literature: Isn't it Gothic-Romantic? 1536 Views
Share It!
Description:
Check out this video to learn more about Gothic Romanticism
Transcript
- 00:02
Isn't it gothic-romantic?
- 00:19
Alright... you know that goth kid in your class the one who wears all [Statue of liberty talking]
- 00:25
black clothing, loves Death Rock has piercings in unusual places and makes
- 00:28
you just a wee bit nervous that they worship the devil
- 00:31
yeah well God isn't quite the same as Gothic Romanticism but there are some [Person grabs book of romanticism]
Full Transcript
- 00:35
similarities there's a fascination with the macabre ie
- 00:38
disturbing death related stuff there is a preoccupation with creating dark and
- 00:42
mysterious visuals and there's a mutual affection for ghosts ghouls and vampires
- 00:46
ie every agent in Hollywood because of [Ghost ghoul and vampire eating at a restaurant]
- 00:48
what's not to love about a vampire such an easy convenient way to donate blood..
- 00:52
but Gothic Romanticism a literary genre that first reared its horns in the late
- 00:57
18th century is so much more than just dressing like the Grim Reaper in order [Man dressed as grim reaper]
- 01:01
to take off your parents the Gothic romantic style of storytelling tapped
- 01:05
into something deep and dark and desperate about the human psyche it was [Mans head opens and spider crawls on brain]
- 01:09
a terrifying void we needed to have filled think about it when we were kids
- 01:13
why do we love hearing stories about children pushing old women to ovens or
- 01:18
wolves swallowing old women whole man old women did not fare well in fairy tales
- 01:22
did they then as we got older we loved reading books of Roald Dahl about people
- 01:26
getting eaten by Giants or attacked by witches or crushed by huge rolling
- 01:30
peaches so yeah even from a young age we demonstrated an attraction to the dark [Magnifying glass burning an ant]
- 01:34
violent and depressing gothic Romanticism or dark romanticism simply
- 01:38
scratch that itch a writer named Washington Irving was the one who jump
- 01:43
started this literary revolution specifically with his story The Legend
- 01:46
of Sleepy Hollow yep that one with the Headless Horseman scary for us and for [Man with no head riding a horse]
- 01:52
the horse but people ate it up they were getting
- 01:55
tired of the Bronte's family dramas and Dickens umpteenth poor miserable orphan
- 01:59
stories following in Irving hoof steps where writers like Edgar Allen Poe who
- 02:04
wrote about hearts beating under floorboards and razor-sharp pendulums [Pendulum swings]
- 02:07
that threaten to cut people in two... Nathaniel Hawthorne who took a less
- 02:10
supernatural approach with his books like The Scarlet
- 02:13
Letter which focus on the concepts of sin evil and guilt and Herman Melville
- 02:17
who wrote about large bloodthirsty whales these perverse sinister tales [Whale eats Melville from a ship]
- 02:22
were exciting unexpected and a new and everybody loves new even when it makes
- 02:28
you pee the bed a little bit ok but where did Gothic Romanticism come from [Bird flying and carrying gothic romanticism book]
- 02:32
was Irving just having recurring nightmares and his therapist told them to
- 02:35
write them down as an exercise it didn't just suddenly spring up from nothing did
- 02:40
it definitely not the only things that spring up out of nowhere are groundhogs [Groundhogs appear from ground]
- 02:43
and essay deadlines before Gothic Romanticism there was just plain old
- 02:47
romanticism if you lived in the 18th century and you were writing a book
- 02:51
in the romantic style you'd write it in a way that valued emotions over reason
- 02:55
it wasn't a denial of reason really romanticism simply thought that we could [Surgeon removes heart]
- 02:59
get at certain truths via the heart ie not everything about the human condition
- 03:03
could be discovered simply by reasoning it out we are after all emotional
- 03:08
creatures so why not write about people responding to their circumstance on a [Man with xray image of his gut]
- 03:11
gut level, rather than always being so logical about everything
- 03:15
so when Irving started writing his ghost stories all he did was focus in on one
- 03:19
emotion in particular horror, dread, fear whatever you want to call it that terror
- 03:24
of the unknown that captivates us all so let's go to the movie theaters in droves [Girl screams when essay lands on her desk]
- 03:28
to watch The Ring, the conjuring or whatever Saw number they're up to now
- 03:32
we love to be scared silly but because we didn't always have the ability to CGI
- 03:37
spine-chilling creatures with gaping holes in their faces for a while we had
- 03:40
to settle for reading about stuff that made our hair stand on end Gothic [Girl reading she has frizzy hair]
- 03:44
Romanticism is even more specific than that though you can't just have a
- 03:47
creature terrorizing your main character but that main character lives in a
- 03:51
cookiecutter house in suburbia USA the setting and tone are huge parts of any
- 03:55
gothic romantic story we're talking dark gloomy settings, dusky moors, old rickety
- 04:01
houses, abandoned buildings with no trespassing signs sometimes the setting
- 04:05
is described so vividly and with such chilling detail it almost become a [Lightning strikes a man]
- 04:10
character itself so yeah if you're reading a story and you start wondering
- 04:13
hey I wonder which Hollywood actor would play this creepy mansion in the movie
- 04:17
version you just might be reading something that falls into the gothic
- 04:20
romantic category and then there the tone stories in the genre don't try [Woman watching TV]
- 04:24
to scare you like most contemporary thrillers or horror stories do in other
- 04:28
words there aren't monsters forever leaping out of closets, or armies of
- 04:32
killer zombies chasing our protagonist Gothic Romantic authors tended to create
- 04:36
a general sense of unease there might be disturbing stuff happening in the story
- 04:40
but the characters would often take these occurrences in stride as if they [Ghosts fly by as guys chat]
- 04:44
were normal ish it wasn't that the stuff that happened was so out of place that
- 04:48
it would scare you but instead that the unnerving events were kind of taken in
- 04:52
stride which was somehow even more unsettling like if we're talking about a
- 04:57
character who keeps hearing a knock on the door and he goes to answer it and [Boy walks to the door]
- 05:00
there's a face of school standing outside we sort of want or hear to run
- 05:03
away screaming down the hall maybe grab a shovel or a shotgun or something not
- 05:07
invite him in and serve him a cup of tea so when you're thinking Gothic
- 05:11
Romanticism don't just think scary and disturbing think scary disturbing and uh
- 05:15
weird all right enough talking about genre let's dig in [Woman steps her heels into book]
- 05:19
our heels and actually read one of these stories since Washington Irving is the
- 05:23
founding father of the style we're going to go into one of his most popular
- 05:26
stories The Devil and Tom Walker as you read ask yourself some of these
- 05:30
questions what's the story setting and how does it add to the feel of the piece
- 05:34
what about the tone what is the story about like how would I summarize it how
- 05:40
does Irving want his readers to feel what identifies this story as
- 05:44
belonging to the genre of Gothic Romanticism why should I care what did
- 05:48
these dark not so scary stories have to do with the landscape of horror stories
- 05:51
today and how did the devil get top billing does this Tom Walker guy need a
- 05:56
better press agent alright give her a read and come back and we'll discuss [Person pulls down pause slide]
- 06:02
okay so first a quick and dirty summary of the story we got this dude Tom Walker
- 06:07
who's a total peach loves his wife so much that when he finds out she's dead [Tom Walker in a misty wooded forest]
- 06:11
he's relieved divorced circa 1820 anyway Tom is all about the benjamins all he
- 06:17
cares about is making money even if it means cheating or swindling other people
- 06:21
out of theirs well one day he meets the devil not the [Person carrying a cake]
- 06:24
food cake not a politician the actual devil.. Mr. Devil makes a deal with Tom
- 06:29
sell me your soul and I'll make you rich beyond your wildest
- 06:32
dreams Tom thinks about it for roughly two seconds then shakes on it done deal [Tom shakes Devil's hand]
- 06:37
sure enough Tom becomes a very wealthy man as a userer
- 06:40
someone who lend money while charging a criminally high interest rate he has a
- 06:45
good run until one day when the devil comes to make good on their little [Tom opens door to the devil]
- 06:48
bargain the devil throws Tom unto his state of death and Tom is due to ride
- 06:54
the creature for the rest of eternity hope he enjoyed his swimming pool full
- 06:59
of dollar bills while he had the chance and that's it guy meets devil, guy falls [Tom jumps into pool of dollar bills]
- 07:02
in love with the devil, guy sells soul to the devil, devil collects soul...
- 07:05
okay now let's go back and take a look at some of our questions first up what's
- 07:10
the story setting and how does it add to the feel of the piece well remember that
- 07:14
thing we talked about when it comes to gothic romantic settings dark and gloomy
- 07:17
right does that description hold true here when Tom meets the devil check out [Tom stood with the Devil]
- 07:21
some of the descriptions of the location the swamp was thickly grown with great
- 07:25
gloomy pines and hemlocks some of them 90 feet high which made it dark at
- 07:29
noonday; a gulf of black smothering mud dark and stagnant pools where trunks of
- 07:36
pines and hemlocks lay half drowned half rotting looking like alligators sleeping
- 07:41
in the mire yeah this setting fits the bill...Wouldn't have had
- 07:45
the same effects if Tom had met the devil while at a hair salon waiting to [Tom sits in salon with the devil]
- 07:49
get his sideburns trimmed would it this sort of location description immediately
- 07:53
establishes a sense of foreboding in other words nothing awful has happened
- 07:57
yet but we already know it's going to black smothering mud is never a good [Lots of wet mud]
- 08:01
thing what about the story's tone here we're looking for the author's attitude
- 08:05
towards his characters toward his subject matter toward his audience etc
- 08:09
well in some ways this story reads like most stories from Irving's era long
- 08:13
carefully worded sentences very descriptive passages but there are some [Poem stamped with differences]
- 08:17
differences between this style and the style of some of those who came before
- 08:20
him your Jane Austen or your Daniel Defoe or your Jonathan Swift the writing
- 08:25
isn't wooden no offense to those other writers we just named they were all
- 08:28
brilliant in their own right but they were writing in an age where it wasn't
- 08:32
kosher to delve so much into emotion they were for the most part [Kosher pickled emotions jar]
- 08:36
straightforward storytellers allowing for an emotional response to come from
- 08:39
the reader but not revealing any emotion outwardly in the writing itself
- 08:43
Irving and other gothic romantic writers altered that way of thinking we
- 08:46
can see a real change in Tom Walker's emotional state between his first [Tom Walker meeting the devil]
- 08:49
meeting with the devil and his last early on Tom was not a man to be
- 08:53
troubled with any fears he was a hard minded fellow not easily daunted but
- 08:58
once the time comes for Tom to offer up his soul he begins to waver...huh, he thinks
- 09:04
maybe it wasn't such a good idea to make a deal with the devil [Tom thinking about the deal]
- 09:07
hindsight's 20/20 right just look at what Tom's actions later in life tell us
- 09:12
about his emotional state he became a violent churchgoer
- 09:15
he prayed loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of
- 09:20
lungs yeah his reasons for becoming more religious might have been selfish but
- 09:25
there's no denying the fear that was suddenly settling in for the first time
- 09:29
in Toms life and once Tom is whisked away and forever cursed to ride the devil's [Tom riding the Devil's horse]
- 09:33
horse well Irving refers to him as a troubled
- 09:36
spirit okay that one might be his understatement how does Irving want his
- 09:40
readers to feel well we should definitely feel wary of making deals
- 09:44
with the devil point made there but notice how even though the story [Man opens door and devil appears]
- 09:47
features the biggest baddest baddie of them all
- 09:50
Satan aka the devil aka old scratch he never pops out of anywhere suddenly he
- 09:56
isn't horrifying to look at in fact Tommy mistakes him as a man at first
- 09:59
he speaks normally treats Tom with decency even the scariest most vicious
- 10:03
thing he does is help Tom onto a horse at the end of the story so Alfred [Devil lays down a stool]
- 10:08
Hitchcock probably isn't knocking down Irving's door for the movie rights or he
- 10:12
wouldn't be if either them were still alive
- 10:14
like most gothic Romantic literature the feeling the story invokes is creepiness
- 10:18
rather than scariness the gloomy swamp the casual attitude of both Tom and the
- 10:23
devil the disgusting way Tom responds to evidence of his wife's death and what
- 10:27
about the humor this thing is chock full of satire ie Irving is irony or
- 10:33
exaggeration to point out how ridiculous people can be when it comes to money or
- 10:37
love or forging questionable friendships like he satirizes the animosity that [tom walking in a misty forest]
- 10:41
often exists between a married couple when Tom realizes the devil killed his
- 10:44
wife and rather than mourn her loss he notices that she must have pulled out
- 10:48
some of the devil's hair and says old scratch must have had a tough time
- 10:51
of it so yeah he feels worse for the devil and his missing patch of hair than [Tom's wife's ghost appears from grave]
- 10:55
he does for his dead wife funny hmm maybe depending on
- 10:59
who you ask well definitely to a zombie disturbing
- 11:02
definitely because the story is so dark the humor only adds to the creepiness
- 11:06
factor what other things identify the story as
- 11:09
belonging to the genre of Gothic Romanticism
- 11:11
well we already talked about the dismal setting and the dark humor but there's
- 11:15
also a big indicator here an element of evil
- 11:18
what's more evil than the devil right and yet he doesn't seem like such a bad [Devil with an axe stood by a tree]
- 11:22
guy just a businessman really the truly evil character here seems to be Tom
- 11:27
Walker who shakes off his wife's death has no problem chatting it up [Tom laughing]
- 11:32
and doesn't seem to care that he's cheating all of his neighbors and
- 11:35
friends out of their life savings so when he finally gets his comeuppance at
- 11:39
the end of story rather than feel horrified we find
- 11:42
ourselves laughing at Tom and cheering for the devil man Washington Irving made us
- 11:46
root for Satan now that is evil finally why should we care we're not likely to
- 11:51
run into the devil on our next trip to the local swamp so what gives well for [Boy standing in a swamp]
- 11:56
one thing without Irving there might be no gothic Romanticism, so no Poe, no
- 12:00
Hawthorne, no Melville and without those authors who took early forays into
- 12:05
horror there might be no Stephen King, no Clive Barker, no RL Stine there might not
- 12:11
be any scary books or movies at all the ring might be a chick flick about a [Boy watching a romantic movie on TV]
- 12:15
overdue marriage proposal the purge might be about someone finally cleaning
- 12:19
out their Gmail box and sharknado well that one would still probably be about a
- 12:23
tornado... but while the story might not seem to have much to do with our
- 12:27
lives on the surface it actually has something to say about the human
- 12:30
condition something we can totally relate to we've all felt the urge to
- 12:33
make a choice that will benefit us in the short run but isn't so great for us [Boy looking at signs for short run or long haul]
- 12:37
in the long haul like maybe we want to buy a few new PlayStation games rather
- 12:41
than put that money into our college fund or we really want to eat that entire box
- 12:45
of donuts even though we know we'll pay for it tomorrow [Person in a toilet cubicle]
- 12:48
Irving waggles his finger at this temporary kind of thinking, showing how
- 12:52
despite the temporary delight you might experience it is so not worth betraying
- 12:57
your conscious in other words it's saying listen to that angel on your
- 13:01
shoulder and not to that devil in your swamp [Devil appears in a swamp]
Up Next
“Happy Hunger Games!” Or not. Katniss’s Hunger Games experiences left a not-so-happy effect on her. This video will prompt you to ponder if...
Related Videos
Who's really the crazy one in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Shmoop amongst yourselves.
Sure, Edgar Allan Poe was dark and moody and filled with teenage angst, but what else does he have in common with the Twilight series?
¿Por que es el 'Gran' Gatsby tan gran? ¿Porque de su nombre peculiar? ¿Porque de el misterio que le rodea? Se ha discutido esta pregunta por muc...
Would would the world be like without books? Ray Bradbury tackles that question—and many more— in Fahrenheit 451. Go ahead; read it on your Kin...