Think of England. It’s a place that surely has it’s beauty, but it’s not very large. The types of landscape that one sees there is nothing compared to the vast landscape of America, which is exponential bigger than England. Many of the settlers that came here came from cities, and were presented with the vast amount of nature that America had to offer since it was so huge. These landscapes of America are very evident in the works of Washington Irving, who describes them in his works “Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”. In Sleepy Hollow, Irving paints a picture of a drowsy little town near a “little valley…one of the quietest places in the world” with a small brook “gliding” through it. Irving uses his amazing writing abilities to go into extensive detail about the landscape and create a drowsy feeling. In the movie that I have seen based upon this story, the woods are old, dark and creepy, which is the vibe that I get from this reading.
In “Rip Van Winkle”, Irving talks of the town that Van Winkle lives in as a place where “the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape”. When Irving explains the part where Van Winkle goes out squirrel hunting, he writes that through “an opening in the trees, [Van Winkle] could overlook all the lower county for many a mile of rich woodland”. This picture brings to mind a beautiful scene. I had already had an advantage when reading this and creating a mental picture, however, because the Wishbone episode depicted the landscape very well. However, for the people who haven’t seen the Wishbone episode, this phrasing and description is amazing; it provides a since of beauty that can make one feel emotions that can’t be described, as anyone who has seen a beautiful scene like this can attest. He goes on to look at the “deep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun”. This is where the story moves on from lovely and beautiful into kind of creepy. This is right before he meets the straggler with the keg, so we know something eerie is about to happen since the landscape is creepier now.
These stories take place in a very close area to each other. In “Sleepy Hollow”, Irving mentions the Hudson River, which runs through present-day New York. The story of “Rip Van Winkle”, takes place in the Catskill Mountains, which also run through New York, and the Hudson is mentioned as well whenever Van Winkle is squirrel hunting. This probably accounts for why the landscapes in each of the stories are so similar, since they take place in almost the same place. It also makes since that Irving would write about this area because it is near where he grew up, so he would know a lot about the landscape and the people living there.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
The one advantage that Irvine has is his almost meticulous detail to the environment. As you mentioned, it paints a pretty vivid picture of these bleak towns that the main characters inhabit. For instance, when Van Winkle returns to his hometown that was pretty much transformed by the Revolutionary War, the way that Irving describes it makes it.. feel more vivid than the dry town that Van Irving left.
While we didn't get to see much of it, Cooper's tales are set in the same areas, and his descriptions are also thick with detail (tho I confess to liking Irving's diction a little better). Perhaps the early writers focused on this because of its difference from England, or perhaps the perspective and its size drew them. A trip to the Catskills might have been a great field trip this fall for us--then we could have seen with our own eyes and judged better the quality of the descriptions!
Irving does what a good author should: they make the description of the story's surroundings set the overall mood. I really like authors who do this because they can create vivid images that make the story come alive in the reader's head. I never got to see the Wishbone version, but I like that you bring it up, because I think for a lot of people, Wishbone was their first encounter with these classic stories.
I agree that Irving's description of the natural landscape greatly enhances the story. The setting of the scen is of the utmost importance in a story. In fact, it is just as important, if not more, than the characters as it creates the mood of a story. Irving successfully paints a creepy background through his detailed description of it.
I might go a step further and say that the descriptions of the places not only really enhance the story... they kind of MAKE the story. If not the plot, they preserve a picture of the world of Early America when they knew it and lived in it, which is really what we're trying to study in this course. So-- that's really cool.
I agree with you about the setting being a very significant and key aspect of Washington Irving's writings. If "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was not set in a quiet little town near a grouping of eery woods the effect would not be the same and the story would lose its tone. The same can be said about the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
Post a Comment