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Isn't it gothic-romantic?

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Alright... you know that goth kid in your class the one who wears all [Statue of liberty talking]

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black clothing, loves Death Rock has piercings in unusual places and makes

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you just a wee bit nervous that they worship the devil

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yeah well God isn't quite the same as Gothic Romanticism but there are some [Person grabs book of romanticism]

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similarities there's a fascination with the macabre ie

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disturbing death related stuff there is a preoccupation with creating dark and

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mysterious visuals and there's a mutual affection for ghosts ghouls and vampires

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ie every agent in Hollywood because of [Ghost ghoul and vampire eating at a restaurant]

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what's not to love about a vampire such an easy convenient way to donate blood..

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but Gothic Romanticism a literary genre that first reared its horns in the late

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18th century is so much more than just dressing like the Grim Reaper in order [Man dressed as grim reaper]

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to take off your parents the Gothic romantic style of storytelling tapped

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into something deep and dark and desperate about the human psyche it was [Mans head opens and spider crawls on brain]

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a terrifying void we needed to have filled think about it when we were kids

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why do we love hearing stories about children pushing old women to ovens or

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wolves swallowing old women whole man old women did not fare well in fairy tales

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did they then as we got older we loved reading books of Roald Dahl about people

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getting eaten by Giants or attacked by witches or crushed by huge rolling

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peaches so yeah even from a young age we demonstrated an attraction to the dark [Magnifying glass burning an ant]

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violent and depressing gothic Romanticism or dark romanticism simply

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scratch that itch a writer named Washington Irving was the one who jump

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started this literary revolution specifically with his story The Legend

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of Sleepy Hollow yep that one with the Headless Horseman scary for us and for [Man with no head riding a horse]

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the horse but people ate it up they were getting

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tired of the Bronte's family dramas and Dickens umpteenth poor miserable orphan

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stories following in Irving hoof steps where writers like Edgar Allen Poe who

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wrote about hearts beating under floorboards and razor-sharp pendulums [Pendulum swings]

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that threaten to cut people in two... Nathaniel Hawthorne who took a less

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supernatural approach with his books like The Scarlet

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Letter which focus on the concepts of sin evil and guilt and Herman Melville

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who wrote about large bloodthirsty whales these perverse sinister tales [Whale eats Melville from a ship]

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were exciting unexpected and a new and everybody loves new even when it makes

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you pee the bed a little bit ok but where did Gothic Romanticism come from [Bird flying and carrying gothic romanticism book]

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was Irving just having recurring nightmares and his therapist told them to

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write them down as an exercise it didn't just suddenly spring up from nothing did

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it definitely not the only things that spring up out of nowhere are groundhogs [Groundhogs appear from ground]

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and essay deadlines before Gothic Romanticism there was just plain old

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romanticism if you lived in the 18th century and you were writing a book

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in the romantic style you'd write it in a way that valued emotions over reason

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it wasn't a denial of reason really romanticism simply thought that we could [Surgeon removes heart]

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get at certain truths via the heart ie not everything about the human condition

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could be discovered simply by reasoning it out we are after all emotional

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creatures so why not write about people responding to their circumstance on a [Man with xray image of his gut]

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gut level, rather than always being so logical about everything

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so when Irving started writing his ghost stories all he did was focus in on one

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emotion in particular horror, dread, fear whatever you want to call it that terror

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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]

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to watch The Ring, the conjuring or whatever Saw number they're up to now

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we love to be scared silly but because we didn't always have the ability to CGI

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spine-chilling creatures with gaping holes in their faces for a while we had

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to settle for reading about stuff that made our hair stand on end Gothic [Girl reading she has frizzy hair]

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Romanticism is even more specific than that though you can't just have a

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creature terrorizing your main character but that main character lives in a

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cookiecutter house in suburbia USA the setting and tone are huge parts of any

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gothic romantic story we're talking dark gloomy settings, dusky moors, old rickety

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houses, abandoned buildings with no trespassing signs sometimes the setting

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is described so vividly and with such chilling detail it almost become a [Lightning strikes a man]

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character itself so yeah if you're reading a story and you start wondering

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hey I wonder which Hollywood actor would play this creepy mansion in the movie

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version you just might be reading something that falls into the gothic

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romantic category and then there the tone stories in the genre don't try [Woman watching TV]

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to scare you like most contemporary thrillers or horror stories do in other

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words there aren't monsters forever leaping out of closets, or armies of

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killer zombies chasing our protagonist Gothic Romantic authors tended to create

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a general sense of unease there might be disturbing stuff happening in the story

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but the characters would often take these occurrences in stride as if they [Ghosts fly by as guys chat]

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were normal ish it wasn't that the stuff that happened was so out of place that

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it would scare you but instead that the unnerving events were kind of taken in

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stride which was somehow even more unsettling like if we're talking about a

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character who keeps hearing a knock on the door and he goes to answer it and [Boy walks to the door]

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there's a face of school standing outside we sort of want or hear to run

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away screaming down the hall maybe grab a shovel or a shotgun or something not

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invite him in and serve him a cup of tea so when you're thinking Gothic

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Romanticism don't just think scary and disturbing think scary disturbing and uh

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weird all right enough talking about genre let's dig in [Woman steps her heels into book]

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our heels and actually read one of these stories since Washington Irving is the

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founding father of the style we're going to go into one of his most popular

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stories The Devil and Tom Walker as you read ask yourself some of these

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questions what's the story setting and how does it add to the feel of the piece

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what about the tone what is the story about like how would I summarize it how

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does Irving want his readers to feel what identifies this story as

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belonging to the genre of Gothic Romanticism why should I care what did

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these dark not so scary stories have to do with the landscape of horror stories

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today and how did the devil get top billing does this Tom Walker guy need a

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better press agent alright give her a read and come back and we'll discuss [Person pulls down pause slide]

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okay so first a quick and dirty summary of the story we got this dude Tom Walker

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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]

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he's relieved divorced circa 1820 anyway Tom is all about the benjamins all he

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cares about is making money even if it means cheating or swindling other people

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out of theirs well one day he meets the devil not the [Person carrying a cake]

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food cake not a politician the actual devil.. Mr. Devil makes a deal with Tom

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sell me your soul and I'll make you rich beyond your wildest

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dreams Tom thinks about it for roughly two seconds then shakes on it done deal [Tom shakes Devil's hand]

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sure enough Tom becomes a very wealthy man as a userer

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someone who lend money while charging a criminally high interest rate he has a

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good run until one day when the devil comes to make good on their little [Tom opens door to the devil]

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bargain the devil throws Tom unto his state of death and Tom is due to ride

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the creature for the rest of eternity hope he enjoyed his swimming pool full

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of dollar bills while he had the chance and that's it guy meets devil, guy falls [Tom jumps into pool of dollar bills]

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in love with the devil, guy sells soul to the devil, devil collects soul...

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okay now let's go back and take a look at some of our questions first up what's

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the story setting and how does it add to the feel of the piece well remember that

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thing we talked about when it comes to gothic romantic settings dark and gloomy

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right does that description hold true here when Tom meets the devil check out [Tom stood with the Devil]

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some of the descriptions of the location the swamp was thickly grown with great

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gloomy pines and hemlocks some of them 90 feet high which made it dark at

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noonday; a gulf of black smothering mud dark and stagnant pools where trunks of

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pines and hemlocks lay half drowned half rotting looking like alligators sleeping

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in the mire yeah this setting fits the bill...Wouldn't have had

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the same effects if Tom had met the devil while at a hair salon waiting to [Tom sits in salon with the devil]

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get his sideburns trimmed would it this sort of location description immediately

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establishes a sense of foreboding in other words nothing awful has happened

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yet but we already know it's going to black smothering mud is never a good [Lots of wet mud]

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thing what about the story's tone here we're looking for the author's attitude

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towards his characters toward his subject matter toward his audience etc

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well in some ways this story reads like most stories from Irving's era long

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carefully worded sentences very descriptive passages but there are some [Poem stamped with differences]

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differences between this style and the style of some of those who came before

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him your Jane Austen or your Daniel Defoe or your Jonathan Swift the writing

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isn't wooden no offense to those other writers we just named they were all

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brilliant in their own right but they were writing in an age where it wasn't

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kosher to delve so much into emotion they were for the most part [Kosher pickled emotions jar]

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straightforward storytellers allowing for an emotional response to come from

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the reader but not revealing any emotion outwardly in the writing itself

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Irving and other gothic romantic writers altered that way of thinking we

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can see a real change in Tom Walker's emotional state between his first [Tom Walker meeting the devil]

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meeting with the devil and his last early on Tom was not a man to be

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troubled with any fears he was a hard minded fellow not easily daunted but

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once the time comes for Tom to offer up his soul he begins to waver...huh, he thinks

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maybe it wasn't such a good idea to make a deal with the devil [Tom thinking about the deal]

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hindsight's 20/20 right just look at what Tom's actions later in life tell us

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about his emotional state he became a violent churchgoer

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he prayed loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of

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lungs yeah his reasons for becoming more religious might have been selfish but

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there's no denying the fear that was suddenly settling in for the first time

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in Toms life and once Tom is whisked away and forever cursed to ride the devil's [Tom riding the Devil's horse]

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horse well Irving refers to him as a troubled

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spirit okay that one might be his understatement how does Irving want his

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readers to feel well we should definitely feel wary of making deals

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with the devil point made there but notice how even though the story [Man opens door and devil appears]

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features the biggest baddest baddie of them all

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Satan aka the devil aka old scratch he never pops out of anywhere suddenly he

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isn't horrifying to look at in fact Tommy mistakes him as a man at first

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he speaks normally treats Tom with decency even the scariest most vicious

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thing he does is help Tom onto a horse at the end of the story so Alfred [Devil lays down a stool]

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Hitchcock probably isn't knocking down Irving's door for the movie rights or he

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wouldn't be if either them were still alive

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like most gothic Romantic literature the feeling the story invokes is creepiness

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rather than scariness the gloomy swamp the casual attitude of both Tom and the

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devil the disgusting way Tom responds to evidence of his wife's death and what

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about the humor this thing is chock full of satire ie Irving is irony or

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exaggeration to point out how ridiculous people can be when it comes to money or

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love or forging questionable friendships like he satirizes the animosity that [tom walking in a misty forest]

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often exists between a married couple when Tom realizes the devil killed his

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wife and rather than mourn her loss he notices that she must have pulled out

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some of the devil's hair and says old scratch must have had a tough time

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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]

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he does for his dead wife funny hmm maybe depending on

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who you ask well definitely to a zombie disturbing

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definitely because the story is so dark the humor only adds to the creepiness

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factor what other things identify the story as

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belonging to the genre of Gothic Romanticism

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well we already talked about the dismal setting and the dark humor but there's

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also a big indicator here an element of evil

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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]

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guy just a businessman really the truly evil character here seems to be Tom

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Walker who shakes off his wife's death has no problem chatting it up [Tom laughing]

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and doesn't seem to care that he's cheating all of his neighbors and

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friends out of their life savings so when he finally gets his comeuppance at

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the end of story rather than feel horrified we find

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ourselves laughing at Tom and cheering for the devil man Washington Irving made us

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root for Satan now that is evil finally why should we care we're not likely to

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run into the devil on our next trip to the local swamp so what gives well for [Boy standing in a swamp]

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one thing without Irving there might be no gothic Romanticism, so no Poe, no

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Hawthorne, no Melville and without those authors who took early forays into

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horror there might be no Stephen King, no Clive Barker, no RL Stine there might not

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be any scary books or movies at all the ring might be a chick flick about a [Boy watching a romantic movie on TV]

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overdue marriage proposal the purge might be about someone finally cleaning

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out their Gmail box and sharknado well that one would still probably be about a

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tornado... but while the story might not seem to have much to do with our

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lives on the surface it actually has something to say about the human

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condition something we can totally relate to we've all felt the urge to

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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]

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in the long haul like maybe we want to buy a few new PlayStation games rather

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than put that money into our college fund or we really want to eat that entire box

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of donuts even though we know we'll pay for it tomorrow [Person in a toilet cubicle]

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Irving waggles his finger at this temporary kind of thinking, showing how

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despite the temporary delight you might experience it is so not worth betraying

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your conscious in other words it's saying listen to that angel on your

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shoulder and not to that devil in your swamp [Devil appears in a swamp]

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