Rip Van Winkle
A New Critical Approach and a (New)
Historical Approach
Starting Questions
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Do you like the story? Its Language? Humor?
Anything else? What could it possibly mean?
What pattern(s) is there in the story? Have
you found any words repeated?
How are the worlds before and after Rip’s
sleep different from each other?
How do you compare this with the other
popular texts on time and space travels?
-- e.g. Somewhere in Time; Kate and Leopold, 《胭脂扣》
-- Lost Horizon (1937, 1973)—Shangri-La
-- 黃梁一夢 (盧生 、呂洞賓 ）
http://big5.zhengjian.org/articles/2008/1/30/49772.html
-- 桃花源記
Outline
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(1) A New Critical Approach –Rip’s
Identities Lost from and Re-Written into
History
(2) As a Realist/Historical Text
(3) “RVW” in Historical Context – critical
of contemporary politics
(4) the unsaid: Irving’s contradictions
Rip Van Winkle
A New Critical Approach
Narrative elements
(1): 3-part structure
& plot
 Beginning – Rip
as a hen-pecked
husband;
 Middle – his venture
into Katskills;
 End – his return
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Rip Van Winkle
Loss and Re-gaining of Rip’s
“Identities”
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Narrative elements (2): characterization
Rip – contradictory right from the start
Beginning: easy-going but insistent in not doing
homework; helpful to others but no use to his
family p. 4)
•
•
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Identifies with his dog – p. 5
Contemplates the landscape – 6
The middle part—a realm of mystery (with
silence, strange peals, game and liquor//an
escape from the original stage for performing
his identities.)
Rip Van Winkle (2)
Narrative frames (2) –entry into
mystery
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
p. 4: from the present tense to the past tense;
the village’s location -- the foot of the fairy
mountains. A village of “great antiquity.”
p. 6 –away from the human world: talking to the
dog and contemplating the landscape on a green
knoll;
p. 6 – stranger – dress of antiquity to another
time zone? (Or the haunting of Hendrick Hudson
as the past?)
p. 7 – amphitheatre –another stage;
p. 7 – Dutch alcohol  sleep --back to the past?
Katskills Mt.: More Signs of
Mystery and Antiquity
1)
A stranger in an antique dress – p. 6
2)
long rolling peals, like distant thunder – p. 7
3)
4)
5)
silence, “something strange and
incomprehensible about the unknown, that
inspired awe and checked familiarity.”
The nine-pins game on the amphitheatre.
Their “peculiar” faces—all with beards, like on
an old Flemish painting p. 7
Rip Van Winkle
Rip: Loss of Identities
After – changes: (of signs for his identities)
1. External things: gun rusted, dog (alter ego) gone, and the
amphitheatre; mountain streams(p. 8)
2. Social and Geographic Changes: a. a crowd of new faces
in the village, strange children (more next page);
b. the village altered; the inn also different p. 9
3. Changes of Family and Acquaintances– the others to
whom the self relates.
4. Changes of Self: the beard the one who is like him:
1. unaccustomed the other parts forming one’s identity:
fashions of clothing; his village, and his own house.
 a double  "I'm not myself ... I can't tell what's my
name, or who I am!" (p. 10)
Rip Van Winkle
A New Critical Approach
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improvement(?) in the environment
Family
"as ragged and wild as if
they belonged to nobody"
Nagging wife
Vedder
Brommel: school master
son—the same;
Judith Gardenier "fresh
comely woman" with a child.
 His wife dies.
(The shrewd tamed)
(Authorities gone –but…)
-- dead
-- In congress
Rip Van Winkle
A New Critical Approach
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Narrative elements (3): political changes
perpetual club of the
sages (p. 8) 
There was a busy,
bustling disputatious
tone about it"
RVW: easy going, not
taking sides.
"A tory! ... a spy! a
Refugee! hustle him!
away with him!" (14)
Rip Van Winkle
Identity re-gained (authenticated)
and written into History
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1.
2.
Narrative elements (4): ending (climax and solution)
Identity re – gained or re-written into history
Finds his Relatives and old acquaintances; makes
adjustment
Gets confirmed by new authorities:
-- p. 11 self-important man’s loss of attention;
-- the historian’s affirmation of Rip as well as Hudson
Becomes “a history” himself in two senses:
-- does nothing but tells stories;
-- has many versions of his story until it is settled down to
the present one.
3.
(2) Rip Van Winkle
As a Realist/Historical Text
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With multiple frame for Rip/reader to enter the
mysterious center step by step.
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The outmost frames (DK’s head notes and end
notes) show attempts to establish credibility which
are either contradictory (beginning) or overdone.
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The other frames lead Rip and the readers in the
direction of the non-human and fantastic.
(2) Rip Van Winkle
Narrative frames (1) --contradictory
self-contradictory attempts at establishing credibility?
 Beginning –
• Knickerbocker's published history-- is known for its
"scrupulous accuracy.“ (pp. 3)
• His errors and follies remembered; his imprint on NewYear cakes (“ a chance for immortality).
 Ending –DK’s claim of accuracy – belief in story and
storytelling
• K an I-witness, suspicion refuted by the end note.
• --Dutch area-- subject to marvellous events and
appearances; there are stranger stories.
Rip Van Winkle in Context:
Washington Irving &
the United States
Any ideas?
It embodies historical
changes (in literature, in the
U.S. history and in Irving’s
life), the historical “unsaid,”
but not escapism.
(3) “Rip Van Winkle” in Literary
and Historical Contexts
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Significant in U.S. Literary history (the
first famous American story), national
identity.
Adding national colors (landscape,
history, immigrants) to a German and
Dutch folklore;
“A national fantasy of escape” from
responsibility (Rust 171)
“Rip Van Winkle” in Literary
Context -- the tale & essay-sketch
tradition  romance
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Tale  dramatic incident as formal skeleton-the long sleep and astonished waking.
The essay-sketch tradition  the subtly
detailed descriptions of place which dominate
the first two paragraphs
Combined into a modern short-story form, the
emergence of American Romantic nationalism
(combining myth and realism romance). (Cf.
Evans)
 but is it a story of escape or the U.S. for all?
(3) Irving as a critic of US nation
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Jefferson: “We have called by different names brethren of
the same principle. We are all Republicans,we are all
Federalists” (‘First Inaugural Address)
Irving as a critical alternative witness to American
Independence and Jeffersonian optimism
his critique conveyed in neglected writings (his
contributions to the Analectic Magazine (1812–15) and
familiar tales (Rip van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow).
e.g. negative presentation of the revolution—on both
personal and national levels—which involves death.
The Time Before the War
“Rip Van Winkle” (1819) in U.S. Context;
set sometime in between 1750 and 1799
A Time of Displacement and Tensions
Before the Revolutionary war, NY is slow-pace and rural.
(1) After 1783 the influx of New Englanders, also called
Yankees, became a torrent that almost submerged the
small Dutch settlements. At that time more people
immigrated to New York from New England than from
anywhere else in the world. By 1820 people joked that
New York was becoming a colony of New England.
(2) After 1779 – the development of ‘Democracy’ and
capitalism  not without conflicts: Republicans had
accused Federalists of being crypto royalists or
unabashed "Tories" ("Washington Irving: `Rip Van
Winkle.'“ )
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(4) “Rip Van Winkle” in National
Context
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My argument: after considering the
historical details, the text can be read as
an embodiment of Irving’s
contradictory views to changes, which
he resists but has to accept. (Cf.
Blakemore)
(3) RVW/Irving in Historical
Context: Contradictions
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Escaped from the States for financial
reasons;
Implied criticism of the new nation and
its democracy, which, however, he had
to embrace.
Contradictory attempts to justify his
escape to England or to a European
mythic past.
“Rip Van Winkle” (1819) in Context
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
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One with desultory interests
in:
• the theater,
• association with literaryminded young men in
New York,
• and travel (including
several trips up the
Hudson and a two-year
excursion to Europe in
1804 and 1805).
“Rip Van Winkle” (1819) in Context
Washington Irving
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His jobs:
• A practicing attorney for only a few years
• 1810 -- joined two of his brothers in the hardware
business.
• Late1812 -- the editor of the Analectic Magazine
• Late 1814 -- an officer in the militia and to serve in the
War of 1812.
• In 1815 -- went to England to help with the failing family
business.
• 1815 – 1832; 1842 - 1846 – remained abroad
• 1829 -1832 -- served as secretary to the American
Legation in London.
• In 1842 -1846 -- he was appointed U.S. Minister to Spain
• How about 1815 to 1829? (Rust, Blakemore)
“Rip Van Winkle” –The Dutch Mythologized
but Displaced into the Past
The Dutch
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“though these folks were evidently amusing
themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces,
the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the
most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever
witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the
scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever
they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like
rumbling peals of thunder.”
But – Is Knickerbocker credible?
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Knickerbocker’s credibility:
A History of New York from the
Beginning of the World to the
End of the Dutch Dynasty, with
Knickerbocker named as the
author. This work is blatantly
satirical, and presents
Knickerbocker as humorously
illogical, even foolish.  New
Yorker of Dutch descent
Consider the frames of “RVW”
The Stranger as an embodiment
of the Dutch past
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The stranger (p. 9): “His
dress was of the antique Dutch
fashion—a cloth jerkin
strapped round the waist—
several pair of breeches, the
outer one of ample volume,
decorated with rows of buttons
down the sides, and bunches
at the knees.”  Hendrick
Hudson (the 1st explorer of
Hudson river)
The Dutch as a National
Haunted
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“For a country that came into cultural selfawareness in an era of Romanticism, a country
perennially self-conscious about a perceived lack
of historical depth, hauntedness has proven
perversely attractive as a form of cultural memory,
able to weave historical sense out of shadows and
to both express and displace the social anxieties
inherent in a nation built on colonialist
dispossession and largely composed of strangers.”
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(Richardson 37)
Irving on Romance vs. politics
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“Poetry and romance received a fatal blow at the
overthrow of the ancient Dutch dynasty, and have
ever since been gradually withering under the
growing domination of the Yankees….But poetry and
romance still live unseen among us, or seen only by
the enlightened few, who are able to contemplate
this city and its environs through the medium of
tradition, and clothed with the associations of
foregone ages.” ( Irving“Conspiracy of the
Cocked Hats” 1839)
The Legend of the Sleepy
Hollow
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Ichabod (a New England teacher)--expelled from
Sleepy Hollow by the apparition of the headless
horseman.
Katrina marries Brom Bones, and life goes on as
before Ichabod’s arrival.
The manners and customs of Sleepy Hollow’s
inhabitants “remain fixed, while the great torrent of
emigration and improvement, which is making such
incessant changes in other parts of this restless
country, sweeps by them unobserved”
References:
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《李伯大夢》導讀--真與假的模糊地帶
http://www.novel.idv.tw/text/comment_3.asp
"Family Resemblances: The Text and Contexts of 'Rip Van Winkle.'"
Blakemore, Steven. "Family Resemblances: The Text and Contexts of 'Rip Van
Winkle.'" Early American Literature 35, no. 2 (2000): 187-207.
Rust, Richard D. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 74: American ShortStory Writers Before 1880. Ed. Bobby Ellen Kimbel, et al, Bowling Green State
University. The Gale Group, 1988. pp. 171-188.
Evans, Walter. “Rip Van Winkle: Overview.” Reference Guide to Short Fiction,
1st ed., edited by Noelle Watson, St. James Press, 1994
"Washington Irving: `Rip Van Winkle.'“ Literature and Its Times: Profiles of
300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them,
Volume 1: Ancient Times to the American and French Revolutions (Prehistory1790s). Ed. Joyce Moss and George Wilson, Gale Research, 1997.
Richardson, Judith. “THE GHOSTING OF THE HUDSON VALLEY DUTCH.”
Going Dutch : the Dutch Presence in America, 1609-2009
Eds. Goodfriend, Joyce D.; Schmidt, Benjamin.; Stott, Annette. Leiden, Boston:
Brill Academic Publishers, 2008.