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- W27879685 abstract "MOST CRITICAL DISCUSSION of Washington Irving's The Legend of Hollow seems inevitably to revolve around the attendant characters of Crane and Brom Bones. This is hardly surprising, considering that each may be viewed as the well-spring for an American cultural archetype/stereotype--Ichabod for that of the city slicker, and Brom for that of the country bumpkin. It is easy enough to see, of course, how the characters of and Brom can be symbolically extended to encompass the conflict frequently manifested in American literature between the urban and the rural, as well as the conflict between the intellectual and what might be termed the physically practical. As Daniel Hoffman notes, Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones dramatized that clash of regional characters--the Yankee versus the Backwoodsman--which would soon become major theme in our literature ... and in our national history (86). Such notorious seedlings certainly warrant the academic fertilizer which has been sprinkled upon them, but in making and Brom the locus of their attention, critics may have slighted the eastern shore of the Hudson's most interesting resident--the headless horseman. A closer look at this galloping Hessian of the Hollow, and specifically at the ambiguity which surrounds the question of whether he is or is not real supernatural being, provides insight into little explored but very compelling possible reason for the continued popular appeal of Irving's The Legend of Hollow, which, like his Rip Van Winkle, has transcended its status as American short-story to become part of our cultural mythology. This tendency to overlook the headless horseman as major character in The Legend of Hollow can be attributed to the widely accepted conventional reading of the story which holds that the headless horseman is not real specter at all but is in fact Brom Bones in disguise, acting out favorite local ghost story in order to scare out of town schoolmaster Ichabod, Brom's romantic rival for the hand of Katrina Van Tassel. Indeed, this scenario is strongly suggested by any number of hints in the story, among them mentions of Brom's Tartar-like knowledge and skill in horsemanship, of his exceedingly knowing looks in the wake of Ichabod's mysterious disappearance, and of his fondness for practical jokes. Despite this evidence--which in court of law would likely be rendered circumstantial--proof that Brom Bones has impersonated the headless horseman is never conclusively established. That the reader is invited to come to this conclusion for him or herself is fairly obvious, but it is of paramount importance to the story's overall effect that Irving's narrator Diedrich Knickerbocker does not. In turn, Sleepy Hollow preserves that ambiguity concerning the supernatural which provides many great ghost stories with their lasting resonance, as H.P. Lovecraft so succinctly articulates in his fascinating critical manifesto Supernatural Horror in Literature: Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity [in ghost story] is not the dovetailing of plot but the creation of given sensation. We may say, as general thing, that weird story whose intent is to teach or produce social effect, or one in which the horrors are finally explained away by natural means, is not genuine tale of cosmic fear. (16) Whether or not The Legend of Hollow qualifies as a genuine tale of cosmic fear is debatable, as its effect upon the reader is assumedly not quite harrowing enough to warrant the application of such label, but the possibility that the headless horseman is an actual ghost (within the context of the fiction, of course) does lurk provocatively in the mind after the story has been shelved, and very probably accounts in large part for the tale's continued popular appeal. Historically speaking, this ambiguity surrounding the supernatural in Irving's Sleepy Hollow is of more importance to the tale than it may seem at first glance. …" @default.
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- W27879685 date "2001-01-01" @default.
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- W27879685 title "Supernatural Ambiguity and Possibility in Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" @default.
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