ntative compositions of Washington Irving, “The Devil and Tom Walker,” and The Raven poem of Edgar Allan Poe, these will be proved clearly for this thesis. First, the representative Romantic who become the first writer American literature to achieve international reputation, as Washington Irving. He was born in a wealthy New York family. He spent much time traveling in European and reading almost European literature, he wrote the folk tale as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Devil and Tom Walker. In “The Devil and Tom Walker” Irving created this famous folktale by reshaping a German folktale that implicates the stereotype of a person who selling his soul to devil. Irving makes the tale distinctly American by setting it in New England during late 1720’s- a time that the Puritanism, especially the belief that a person life should be devoted to God, was being replaced by commercialism and the desire for personal gain. The Devil tells him about a great treasure of Kidd the pirate. Tom tells to his wife, and she tries to get the treasure by she dies because of her greed. Tom gets the treasure by selling his soul to the devil but in the end, the devil comes for his soul and takes him away. The story relates to the nature because Irving put the scenes of the swamp. He describes the swamp like a horrible and mystery place. The story also describes the feelings of each character dramatically. Especially, the feeling of greed that states clearly in main character Tom Walker. When he knows his wife doesn’t return, he just worries about the value that his wife brought with her. The story shows an interest in the unusual such as Irving describes the death of Tom’s wife. Her hair, lung and her apron were hung on the tree. This folk tale story is also an important lesson that teaches people-don’t be greedy. Therefore, Irving succeeded in creating folktale story that is Romantic. H...
