ENGLISH 2231: American Literature 1

Washington Irving

Unfortunately the most popular works of Washington Irving (Baym et al. 978-980), "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," were Disney-fied in the 20th century, and those people who are familiar with them know them primarily as light entertainment or children's stories.  Certainly, they are funny, and they are meant to be funny, but there is much more here than simple humor.

Just as many comedians (like those on Saturday Night Live or Minnesota's own Al Franken) and TV shows (like All in the Family, The Simpsons, or South Park ) use stories to comment on current events, Washington Irving used many of his stories as social and political commentary.  This is true of "Rip Van Winkle" (Irving 980-992) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (Irving 992-1013).  Both of these stories comment on changes occurring in the United States around the period of the American Revolution and in the early 19th century immediately following the Revolution.  

These stories also appear at the beginning of the rise of romanticism among writers in the U.S. As you read about romanticism on the webpages below, notice how it uses the ideas of the Enlightenment but is also a reaction against them. This reaction can be seen in the themes of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."  In the online "Instructor's Guide" to the Heath Anthology of American Literature (another anthology similar to ours), editor William Hedges lists the following as possible "major themes" and questions associated with Irving's two stories:

• "Rip Van Winkle": loss (and discovery?) of identity; a challenge to American values, the work ethic. Does Rip himself represent anything positive? George III vs. George Washington (is the story anti-republican?); is the story sexist?
• "Sleepy Hollow": artificiality vs. naturalness; Puritan-Yankee intellectual pretentiousness, hypocrisy, greed, and commercialism as threats to an American dream of rural abundance and simple contentedness; the uses of imagination.

The editors of NAAL refer to similar ideas in their biographical sketch of Irving (978-980).  The final sentence in particular overlaps with exactly the themes Hedges mentions above.  

"On American Romanticism" is a page maintained by Ann Woodlief, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.  It has a definition of romanticism and a list of characteristics of romanticism based on the British romantic tradition. Most of these same characteristics can be found in American romanticism.  At this point in our studies, pay particular attention to those items not specifically related to poetry.  We will come back to the poetry later.

Another website created by Professor Paul Reuben,  "Chapter 3: Early Nineteenth Century: Romanticism - A Brief Introduction" gives brief lists of ideas about the the ideas in question.  It will be useful to compare his sparse explanations with the more in-depth discussion on Woodlief's page above.

As you read, please keep these all of these ideas in mind. We will discuss them on the bulletin board and in our chats.