The two authors I choose to make playlists for are Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe.  

The link to my first playlist is here: http://pl.st/p/22693976587

"Across The Universe" by The Beatles is very appropriate for a Washington Irving playlist.  Washington Irving's stories follow romanticism ideas and themes.  He liked to include themes of nature, imagination, and escapism in his writings.  In the two short stories we read for class, "Rip Van Winkle" and "Sleepy Hollow," Irving plays with our imagination.  He creates stories that in real life we would never believe to be true.  In "Rip Van Winkle" he introduces us to a countryman who falls asleep for twenty years after drinking from a strangers flagon.  "One taste provoked another; and he reiterated his visits to his flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declines and he fell into a deep sleep" (Irving).  The reader's imagination runs wild with this idea.  What is this drink?  Where did it come from?  Why was it given to Rip Van Winkle?  The lyrics of "Across the Universe" also make our imaginations run wild.  The lyrics give images and life to different emotions.  "Across the Universe" is a song that many would classify as having romantic ideas and themes if knowledgeable on the topic.  I mostly want to discuss how the lyrics invoke ones imagination.  The following lines really stuck out to me, as they combine emotions with ones imagination.  "Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind possessing and caressing me" (Beatles).  This evokes our imagination because they are giving physical attributes to thoughts inside our minds.  Another line that creates a vision in our mind, that is otherwise impossible, is as follows, "Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup." (Beatles).  I literally imagine a bunch of words filling and overflowing from a paper cup.  These words are playing with our imaginations, just as Washington Irving did.  

Another song Washington Irving may have in his playlist is the American classic, "America The Beautiful" written by Katherine Lee Bates.  As I have mentioned above Washington Irving was a writer of the romantic era.  He included the use of nature, imagination, and emotion into his writings.  I now want to specifically look at Irving's use of nature in his stories.  Irving describes in detail the views upon which his characters discover.  He uses descriptive words to paint a picture in the audiences mind.  An excellent example of this is as follows, "light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape." (Irving).  The writer of "America the Beautiful" similarly uses this technique for her audience.   This helps so that the audience may actually feel as if they are actually there.  An example of nature descriptive language in "America the Beautiful" is as follows, "for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain" (Bates).  Washington Irving uses the images of nature to evoke certain emotions; oftentimes giving nature human attributes.  In "Rip Van Winkle" he even goes as far to give nature religious attributes.  The following is an example as such, "[Kaatskill Mountains] swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country" (Irving).  This compares to "purple mountain majesties" in "America the Beautiful" (Bates).  Noble, majesty, and lording are three words which make some think of religion and God, others excellency and greatness.  Either way, they are words that bring great emotion to the story and/or song.  This emphasis on emotion was very common in romantic writing and throughout Irving's works.

A link to my second playlist is here: http://pl.st/p/22702446091

"Building A Mystery" by Sarah McLachlan would be perfect for an Edgar Allan Poe playlist.  As we discovered in our readings, Edgar Allan Poe's writings oftentimes satisfied two different literary genres, the romantic and the gothic.   The first song I choose, "Building A Mystery" however is strictly gothic.  It would then make sense for this paragraph to only talk about the gothic elements in Edgar Allan Poe's writings.  In Harrison Hammond's week eleven discussion titled, "Poe Gothic" he points out that the descriptions of the landscapes and architecture in Poe's writings are usually described in a gothic way.  An example of this gothic description from the short story, "Fall of the House of Usher" is as follows, "ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows" (Poe).  These descriptions create an eerie feeling for the audience.  I found in one verse of the song, "Building A Mystery" that it also described the landscape in a gothic manner.  The verse goes like this, "You live in a church, where you sleep with voodoo dolls, and you won't give up the search, for the ghost in the halls" (McLachlan).  I immediately assume this church to be old, dark, and mysterious because she mentions there may be "ghosts in the halls" (McLachlan).  I also picture this church to be quite eerie as there is someone sleeping there with voodoo dolls.  Voodoo dolls usually makes one think of witches, magic, and curses.  All of which would fall under gothic topics.  Another way in which some of Poe's stories satisfied the gothic theme is that they utilized the use of the mysterious and terrifying.  Both considered gothic elements as defined by The Norton Anthology.  In "Fall of the House of Usher" we read that the narrator begins to hear strange noises coming from somewhere unrecognizable.  We find out shortly after that the noises came from the Usher's sister buried alive below.  If this is not considered mysterious and terrifying I don't know what else is.  In the song "Building A Mystery" we can also find aspects of mystery and terror.  Sarah McLachlan writes of vampires, ghosts, screaming, night, and fears all words which could be considered terrifying or mysterious, sometimes even both.  The title of the song even includes the word mystery.   For these reasons I find Sarah McLachlan's song, "Building A Mystery" to hold gothic elements, just as several of Edgar Allan Poe's writings did.

The other song that would be appropriate for an Edgar Allan Poe playlist is "My Immortal" by Evanescence.  This song holds both romantic and gothic elements just as Poe's writing did.  In Yolanda Mounger-Lovely week ten discussion titled, "Week Ten" she describes that Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "Annabel Lee" is focused on the theme of love.  She also mentions that there is a "sense of fear" to the poem (Mounger-Lovely).  The song, "My Immortal" also has a theme of love and speaks frequently of fear.  Love and fear are both very strong emotions.  We have learned that a "greater attention to the emotions" is one predominate theme of romantic writing (Melani).  An example of this mixture of emotions in "Annabel Lee" is as follows, "that the wind came out of the cloud by night, chilling and killing my Annabel Lee" (ll. 25-26).  The narrator refers to Annabel Lee as "my Annabel Lee" because of the love held between the two (Poe).  We also get a sense of fear reading these poem lines because the narrator speaks of her being chilled by the wind, and dying at night because of it.  In the song "My Immortal" there are many lines that speak of fear.  We draw a conclusion that this fear is stemmed from the fact that someone she loved dearly has either died or left her.  We find evidence that she once loved this person dearly from the line, "you used to captivate me by your resonating light." (Evanescence).  To be captivated by someone can be described as almost being under their spell.  Some would agree that this is a feeling one has when in love.  As I mentioned before there are many lines in this song that refer to fear.  The following is just one of these lines, "your face it haunts, my once pleasant dreams."  Here she is describing how the fear is affecting her, it is haunting her.  The emphasis on emotion in the song, "My Immortal" is the reason I chose this song for the Edgar Allan Poe playlist.  It should be clear by now that most if not all of Edgar Allan Poe's writings hold great emotion.

I would say that my two playlists compare closely to each other.  Both of the authors I choose to make my playlists for were writers of the romantic period.  This entitles that many of the same themes or topics were utilized in their writings.  Which in turn makes my two playlists similar to each other in the sense that they both correlate to romanticism.  I did however decide for each playlist to be based off different aspects of romantic writing so as not to be too repetitive. This would be the biggest contrast between my playlists.