{"id":617,"date":"2017-12-19T17:34:51","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T22:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/?p=617"},"modified":"2017-12-19T23:18:55","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T04:18:55","slug":"washington-irving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/2017\/12\/19\/washington-irving\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Irving"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(c. 1855-1860) via Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Washington Irving was born on April 3rd<\/sup>, 1783, in New York City, mere months before the Treaty of Paris closed out the American Revolutionary War.\u00a0 Six years later, when George Washington came to New York City for his inauguration, Irving received the President-Elect\u2019s blessing.\u00a0 The Founding Father\u2019s gesture turned out to be oddly prescient; the young boy who the President had just blessed later became America\u2019s first internationally best-selling author.\u00a0 That being said, Irving\u2019s literary talents took quite a bit of coaxing to reveal themselves; a young Irving proved himself utterly useless when it came to academic learning, and he received little more than an elementary school education by modern standards.<\/p>\n

As he grew older, Irving struggled for many years to find a career that suited him; while touring Europe in 1805, Irving considered a career as a painter, and he briefly worked in the law office of John Treat on Wall Street. \u00a0He even served as and aide-de-camp to Daniel Tomkins, governor of New York, during the War of 1812.\u00a0 Yet seeds of his later literary success littered the early period of his life; during this time, Irving published a series of satirical letters in the Morning Chronicle <\/em>and worked with James Paulding and David Longworth to create a literary magazine titled Salmagundi. \u00a0<\/em>In 1809 Irving found his first true success as a writer upon publishing A History of New York <\/em>under the assumed identity of Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker.<\/p>\n

The major turning point in Irving\u2019s literary career arose after he moved to England in an attempt to salvage his family\u2019s floundering trade business; while discussing his childhood in New York with his brother-in-law, Henry Van Wart, Irving fondly recalled summer afternoons spent wandering the Tarrytown area, filled with nostalgia as he remembered listening to local folk stories and admiring the scenery.\u00a0 Suddenly, inspiration struck, and after locking himself in his chambers and writing through the night, Irving composed an early draft of the story that would later be known as \u201cRip Van Winkle.\u201d\u00a0 Two years later, on March 1, 1819, Irving gave a manuscript containing the first of a series of publications titled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent,<\/em> to the captain of a ship to New York to deliver to his brother Ebenezer for publishing.\u00a0 With that, Irving\u2019s career as a writer officially took off.<\/p>\n

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“Washington Irving and His Literary Friends at Sunnyside,” via Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Irving\u2019s The Sketch Book <\/em>met with commercial and critical success in both the United States and England.\u00a0 These stories constituted the start of an American literary identity on the international stage.\u00a0 While Irving\u2019s collection mainly included tales revolving around British characters and settings, it is the two American-set stories, \u201cRip Van Winkle\u201d and \u201cThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow,\u201d which received the best response.<\/p>\n

After spending several years abroad in England and Spain, Irving returned to the US in 1832, but ten years later he was appointed Minister to Spain by President John Tyler, a position he held until 1846.\u00a0 Following his political career, Irving moved back to America and took up permanent residence in his home, Sunnyside, <\/em>in Tarrytown, New York. During this period he published many works, including a few biographies and several essays and stories, several of which were published in literary magazines such as The Knickerbocker.\u00a0 <\/em>Washington Irving died of a heart attack on November 28th<\/sup>, 1859.<\/p>\n

Other notable works by Irving include Bracebridge Hall(<\/em>1822), Tales of a Traveller<\/em>(1824), Tales of the Alhambra<\/em>(1832),\u00a0Astoria<\/em>(1836), and a famous five-volume biography of America\u2019s first President, The Life of George Washington<\/em>(1855-1859).\u00a0 None of Irving\u2019s later literary works ever measured up to the initial success of The Sketch Book <\/em>and the two celebrated tales that brought him his initial fame.<\/p>\n

Works Consulted<\/p>\n

Burstein, Andrew.\u00a0 The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving.\u00a0 <\/em>Basic Books, 2008.<\/p>\n

Jones, Brian Jay.\u00a0 Washington Irving: An American Original. <\/em>Arcade Publishing, 2008.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dutch Influence in “Rip Van Winkle”<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Rip Van Winkle illustration by NC Wyeth, via Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One intriguing aspect of Washington Irving\u2019s \u201cRip Van Winkle\u201d is the author\u2019s comparison of the somewhat fragmentary new\u00a0consensus\u00a0 of the United States with the cultural roots that form the true axial foundation of Rip\u2019s colloquial village: the Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam.\u00a0 The Dutch influence pervades \u201cRip Van Winkle\u201d in nearly every aspect with a dogged persistence; \u201cthe houses of the original settlers\u201d(Irving 27) dot Rip\u2019s village, and the imprint of Dutch colonialism embeds itself in the landscape itself in the form of Hendrik Hudson and his crew. Even Rip himself, despite his twenty year slumber, persists within the village in the form of his son, a near-identical replication of his own youthful self.\u00a0 Despite the passage of time and the deterioration of much of the familiar historical architecture of the town, Rip\u2019s face remains preserved.\u00a0 The perseverance of these Dutch touchstones stands in stark juxtaposition with the apparent fragility of the regions new identity as a portion of the United States, represented by the \u201clarge rickety\u201d Union Hotel and a regal painting of King George whose \u201cred coat was changed for one of blue\u201d in order to change the image to one of General George Washington (Irving 35).\u00a0 Through this implicit assertion that post-Revolutionary union is a shallow fa\u00e7ade, Irving posits that the Dutch hegemony that lingers from the colony of New Amsterdam is the true unifying factor which allows for the continuity of American cultural identity as Rip inherits the role of the region\u2019s original colonists as the source of local history; the tale concludes with Rip assuming the role of village storyteller, essentially becoming the purveyor of history at the same instance that his strange story becomes local legend.\u00a0 Rip becomes both the conveyor and the subject of history, thus revealing Irving\u2019s evaluation of American culture as a form of self-creation, a force that is not formed by political identity or governmental force, but rather by a shared sense of community and history which supersedes national boundaries and is geographically grounded in the American landscape.<\/p>\n

Irving, Washington.\u00a0 \u201cRip Van Winkle.\u201d\u00a0 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow & Other Stories. <\/em>Dover, 2008, pp. 26-41.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Irving was born on April 3rd, 1783, in New York City, mere months before the Treaty of Paris closed out the American Revolutionary War.\u00a0 Six years later, when George Washington came to New York City for his inauguration, Irving received the President-Elect\u2019s blessing.\u00a0 The Founding Father\u2019s gesture turned out to be oddly prescient; the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[105,103,104,102,101],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","tag-dutch","tag-legend-of-sleepy-hollow","tag-rip-van-winkle","tag-tarrytown","tag-washington-irving"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":648,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions\/648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/litandthecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}