8/13/2019 Question 3-Washington Irving American Story Teller

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Washington Irving: American Story Teller

Washington Irving was born in New York on April 3, 1783 and is the first urban writer of Ameria! "e

read #nglish literature at home and was influened b$ %hakespeare, &liver 'oldsmith and (aurene

%tern! At age of 1) Irving wrote a series of satirial essa$s on the theatre of New York! When writingessa$s his row models were #nglish writers!

When he showed signs of tuberulosis in 18*+, his brother sent him for a two$ear tour of #urope! It

was then when Irving had #uropean eduation and had the hane to meet --

.he $ear of his birth is the $ear when the Amerian war for Independene ended!

.he Amerian territories were /ritish olonies, the settlers ame from /ritain and had a longstanding

ulture histor$, national identit$, m$ths, legends, stories that desribed and e0plained their soiet$! All

of a sudden these /ritish beame Amerians, a new nation, soiet$ without a historial past! .he$ felt a

lak of ultural tradition! Irving felt that there is a need for m$ths and legends for this new soiet$,

nation that felt a kind of identit$ rises! .his an be perfetl$ seen in 2W when he returns to the

village!

Irving is ver$ often alled the father of Amerian literature for his introdution of new genres horror

stor$ and omial stor$! "e is also the writer who had written the first short stor$ of loal olor!

4rom #uropean writers he saw how the$ used the #uropean landsape in their works! "e disovered

the literar$ potentials of the Amerian landsapes! "e took the #uropean tales5 stories and adopted

them to Amerian settings, landsapes! "e wanted to do the same with the Amerian setting that the

#uropeans did for their setting! Irving used the desription of the landsape as a framework! (ater

writers influened b$ Irving did the same! .his usage of the landsape an be seen both in 2W and

the (egend of %leep$ "ollow!

In 2W as earl$ as in the seond paragraph Irving gave us the desription of the vo$age up the "udson

path whih is the point when he introdues the elements alled loal -!

In this partiular stor$ of his, Irving used not one but two frameworks! .he first one is the above

mentioned vo$age and the seond one is ip6s dream, the uth framework is used and also the Indian

setting!

.he alread$ mentioned elements of horror and gothi elements whih appear in %leep$ "ollow were

also taken from #uropean folk traditions, espeiall$ 'erman folk stories!

Apart from writing horror and omi stories Irving wrote stories in whih he ombined the elements of

both genres, as for e0ample in the (egend of %leep$ "ollow! .his fusion of these elements an be also

seen in the works of #dgar #! ! #A elaborated on what Irving started and reated a whole genre of it!

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