Romanticism's Sublime Style in Rip Van Winkle, Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Billy Budd

The sublime is an art work is meant to bring out the emotion in the viewer or have the viewer reflect personal experience. Jung (2014) states the sublime

American Romanticism is a journey away from the corruption of civilization and the limits of rational thoughts, and toward the integrity of nature and the freedom of imagination. In other words, it is a journey away from industrialism or rationalism, which is working hard and earning money. This movement, originally started in Europe and later reached in America. It can be best defined as a thought that values feeling and intuition over reason. Some of the characteristics include the importance of feeling and intuition over reason, placing faith in inner experience and the power of imagination, preferring youthful innocence over educated sophistication, finding beauty and reality in exotic locales. It encouraged people to enjoy the integrity of nature and freedom of imagination. It also encouraged one to have faith in imagination and inner experience. In addition, romanticists found inspiration in myth, legend, and folk culture and found poetry as the highest expression of imagination. Romanticists believed that the landscape was regarded as an extension of the human personality, capable of sympathy with man 's emotional state, whereas nature was regarded as a vehicle for spirit just as man; the breath of God fills both man and the earth. However, romantics would create chaos when the issues were connected with human rights, individualism, and freedom from oppression (Arpin 138-150).

The romantic movement occurred in the 1800 and 1900’s. There may be some confusion or disagreement on an exact definition but the overall movement focused on the individual more than society, an individual’s imagination and feelings (Romanticism), and ideal perspective on nature, conflict between good and evil and some would include the element of the supernatural (Dincer 218).

American Romanticism illustrates the first truly American literary movement that began alongside the beginning of a new nation. American Romanticism appeared in response to the rationalists, such as Ben Franklin, which the American Romantics believed to be too single-minded and expressive. American Romanticism focused on the beauty of nature, imagination, feelings and expressions, higher truths in life that had to be discovered, and individualism. Consequently, this literary movement turned away from the corruption of cities and the rationalist mindset of the world and focused on nature and imagination. Washington Irving, in his stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”, displays characteristics of American Romanticism and

In the essay, “A Literature of Place”, Barry Lopez expresses the importance of nature as it applies to human life. Through this he states that humans’ imagination are inspired by the scenery around them. Lopez revolves around a central perspective; Ancient american literature has always been rooted in nature. By acknowledging that modern human identity has been interpreted by nature, Lopez describes how the landscape of an area can shape the structure of the communities and how it can help with spiritual collapse. Nature writing has often been summarised by being one of the oldest threads in american literature. With our nation's aging one needs to reflect on their literary past; therefore, Lopez insists that we find our path to nature that

Washington Irving illustrates the characteristics of American Romanticism through his representation of nature. A characteristic of an American Romantic story is how it “contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual

During this class, I have learned much that I was surprised of some of the information that was delivered. While I slightly knew what I might have expected to see during the course, the concepts that were introduction were fascinating and I was shocked that I didn’t know a few beforehand. One such important concept was the idea of the sublime.

"We need scarcely say, that these volumes have neither principle, object, nor moral; the horror which abounds in them is too grotesque and bizarre ever to approach near the sublime, and when we did not hurry over the pages in disgust, we sometimes paused to laugh outright; and yet we suspect, that the diseased and wandering imagination, which has stepped out of all legitimate bounds, to frame these disjointed combinations and unnatural adventures, might be disciplined into something better. We heartily wish it were so, for

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief--oh, no!--it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night . . . the terrors distracted me. (122)

According to Longinus, another identifying mark of the Sublime is the use of accumulations, which are also found in "The Circular Ruins." For example, before the magician dreamt his entire son, he first dreamt his son's beating heart. Over a period of fourteen nights, he carefully examined this heart until he actually touched it with his finger. After that, he dreamt another organ in the same manner. Eventually, he even dreamt the eyelids and hair. After finally accumulating all the parts of the boy, the magician's son was complete and ready to become accustomed to reality (Borges 47-49).

The world around us holds so many different things. There is the natural beauty of nature, found in waterfalls, and forests, deserts and beaches, that help us to appreciate where we come from. There is the supernatural, almost the exact opposite, being something that we either envy and want or despise and fear, such as witches and vampires, superheroes and magic. Everything we feel as people, as individuals plays into what we want and how we act. All of these things are aspects of Romanticism, which we can see in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

William Blake was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

The aim of this paper is to examine the elements of modernism in The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Sons and Lovers by D.H Lawrence and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

The sublime describes the awe and shock that people experience when they see something that is enormous in size. David Rodgers summarizes the works of a man named Longinus, who is credited as the first person to define the sublime. Longinus defines it as “differing from beauty and evoking more intense emotions by vastness, a quality that inspires awe. Whereas beauty may be found in the small, the smooth, the light and the everyday, the sublime is vast, irregular, obscure and superhuman” (Rodgers, 1996, pg. 889). He explains that the sublime is more than just beauty because the sublime captures the massive size of these objects that creates wonderment. Along with Longinus writing about the vast and sheer awe that the sublime creates, Immanuel Kant also explains his definition of the sublime. Kant explains that “the physical properties, whether actually or imaginative perceived, that were generally accorded to the sublime by 18th-century writers, were vastness, obscurity and irregularity, all of which could evoke a degree of terror” (Rodgers, 1996 pg. 890). He also agreed that the impressive size of things helped make them sublime. Overall, the sublime explains the wonderment and awe that someone feels when looking at something that is huge and impressive.

William Blake’s poetry is considered through the Romantics era and they access through the sublime. The Romantics poetry through the sublime is beyond comprehension and spiritual fullness. A major common theme is a nature (agnostic religion). In William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” he describes the tiger as a creature that was created by a higher power some time before. In Blake’s poem he questions, “What immortal hand or eye/ Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” (Blake 22-23). He describes the tiger as a form of symmetry that can be seen as evil, yet have intriguing features such as those that make the tiger a beautiful creation. Blake also questions if that the higher being who created the tiger also created all else around the world such as a human being. Blake shifts his first stanzas from the tiger to the creator. Not only is he questioning who created the tiger, but he is also describing the beauty and evil of the world. The beauty that the Romantics believe in is nature and one evil seen through the world is materialism that distract humans from the beauty of nature 's gifts. He believes that people lose touch with spirituality when haven’t given to nature. Blake also illustrated his own works through