Popular Culture Review Vol. 5, No. 1, February 1994 | Page 16
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Popular Culture Review
In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving gives us another pop
art standard, the deliciously ironic expulsion of the Englishteacher/pop-culturalist, the "singing master" and stereotypical
"pedagogue," Ichalx)d Crane. This almost cartoonish character, like
a "scarecrow" or "famine descending upon the land" (1:255), will
never be allowed to win the hand of the buxom and flirtations
Katrina Van Tassel-the richly endowed and fertile Miss America
herself“ but must fall prey to the popular superstition of that very
mercenary Hessian soldier who had previously and unsuccessfully
attempted to install the "King's English" by foreign force. In this
popular scenario, only the handsome "darling of the Hudson River
Valley," Brom Bones, possesses the physique and wit worthy of
Katrina; and the ugly and foolishly avaricious Crane is rightfully
expelled by the horrific "headless horseman" who hurls at his
victim no mere specter or verbal taunts and wails but, truly, the
grossly visual, the "shattered pumpkin" found by the "visionary
inhabitants" of Tarry Town.
In this same but darker vein, Edgar Allan Poe of course gives us
numerous examples of the use of "ghost stories" as both the standard
and material of some of our most popular and intriguing American
literature. "Ligeia," for example, with its overtones of cunning
derangement and ghastly disfigurement, of marital cruelty and
murder, offers a powerful mix of "psychological occultism" informing
many a pulp best-seller, a la Stephen King’s Carrie or Pet Cemetery.
In accepting and manipulating this popular standard, however, Poe is
careful to stress the ocular adoration informing the whole of his art.
He admits the New-World obsession:
What was it--that something more profound than the
well of Democritus—which lay far within the pupils
of my beloved? What was it! Those eyes! those
large, those shining, those divine orbs! (1:413).
Significantly, in this popularization of the Christian resurrection
motif, the beloved arises only through the power of Super-Ocularity
or Prooidence: