Influenced Styles In Washington Irving's The Devil And Tom Walker

Influenced Styles
Throughout history, writers have used many different styles to articulate their beliefs, and each new idea seems to evolve from an outgoing style. Washington Irving, an American author who wrote the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker", was one of many to go completely against this trend in the United States during the 18th century. He helped to introduce American Romanticism to the masses, a bold move considering that the general public still idolized Puritanical or Classicist writings. The freedom to create any story imaginable helped fuel authors to completely overhaul novels, poems, and short stories, and "The Devil and Tom Walker" is a classic representation of the changes that have occurred in American literature.
One of the main ideas of American Romanticism is that nature is not only a necessity but that it functions as a beautiful sanctuary, inspiring the reader to construct a mental image of the setting. The "Devil and Tom Walker" is a story rooted in nature, and Irving incorporates different animals and environments throughout. For example, it is said that, “A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field
Irving, a nonreligious man, wrote this fictitious story that causes its audience to really consider their lives and to question what is possible in the future. His anti-Puritanical writings, while frowned upon by many, led to a new period of American Romanticism and inspired many new authors, such as Edgar Allen Poe, to follow in his footsteps. Without discussion, "The Devil and Tom Walker" is one of the many short stories that follows a Romantic style, and it clearly exhibited the huge shift in style that America went through in the 19th