miguel-se7

Welcome back to another edition of our Weekly Readings series. If you missed any of the previous posts you can find them here.

This week we focused on a short story called 'The Legend of the Two Discreet Statues' by Washington Irving, this is one of the many supernatural tales written by Irving.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was an American short story writer, biographer, historian and diplomat. Irving was one of the first American authors to achieve acclaim in Europe and is best known for writing 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'.

In 1829 Irving stayed in the Alhambra, a palace found in Granada, Spain, for a few weeks. He was enthralled by the place which inspired him to write about the place, its history, traditions, legends and myths.

One of the works resulting from this was 'The Legend of the two Discreet Statues' which follows the live of a gardener called Lope Sanchez and his family. During the festivities of St. John's Eve his daughter finds and amulet which starts a fantastical adventure for the little girl, one which is filled with spectral apparitions as she wanders through the halls of the Alhambra getting to see it in all its former glory.

The story features beautiful descriptions of the scenery, one of the reasons it helped spike an interest in the Alhambra during the 19th Century. The characters could have been developed a bit better, as it feels they are just taken out of the picture once they have served their purpose on the story; that being said, there are some really interesting interactions between them, specially once the priest is introduced into the tale.

Overall the short story is a pretty fascinating tale. You can read the whole story for free here courtesy of The Library of America. If you want to find more about The Library of America please read below.

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