themes and characteristics similar to what I have already touched on in his tale “Rip Van Winkle.” Washington Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle is a prime example of the individual because he does whatever he wants. The only thing wrong with Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle is that he doesn’t want to do anything. This could be a prime reason why his wife is constantly henpecking him, and why the townspeople enjoyed Rip Van Winkle’s company but had the complete opposite feeling about his wife. “The great
Romantic Hero Literary Analysis Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving tells the story about a man who takes a nap in the mountains for twenty years. Van Winkle might not qualify as a stereotypical hero, but he possess qualities of a Romantic Hero. A Romantic Hero is a literary archetype referring a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has the self as the center of his or her own existence. Through having a child like innocence, mistrusting women
was born. Irving would meet his namesake as a child in 1789. Years later this boy would be called “the Father of American Romanticism” and would travel around the US and Europe. Irving’s most famous short stories focused on in this paper, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are considered to be the first pieces of Romanticism in American Literature, the themes of which are still found in modern day American storytelling. Irving
significant role in developing “such widely diverse literary forms as the sea novel, the novel of manners, political satire and allegory, and the dynastic novel in which over several generations American social practices and principles are subjected to rigorous dramatic analysis” (Gray 49). Cooper felt committed to distinguishing American Language from British English In his works; he used native dialects of America to develop an American literary language as a sign of cultural independence. As the