LITERARY ANALYSIS OF RIP VAN WINKLE There are many stories from the 19th century that left an indelible impact on early American Literature at the start of the Age of Romanticism. For example, Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” has been mentioned as one of those stories because it incorporates three important characteristics of our nation’s mythology. First of all, the story takes place during an important time in our nation’s history, before the start of the Revolutionary War. It happens in
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