Rip Van Winkle
A New Critical Approach and in Context
Starting Questions
Do you like the story? Its Language? Humor?
Anything else?
 How do you compare this with the other
popular texts on time/space travels?
-- e.g. Somewhere in Time;
-- Lost Horizon (1937, 1973)
-- 黃梁一夢 (盧生 、呂洞賓 ）
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http://ms.ly.ks.edu.tw/~chinese/i_work/idiom.htm
-- 桃花源記
Outline
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A New Critical Approach –Rip’s Identities
Lost from and Re-Written into History
As a Realist/Historical Text
“RVW” in Historical Context
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. 6)
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•
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Identifies with his dog – p. 8
Contemplates the landscape – 8-9
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
Rip: Loss of Identities
After – changes: (of signs for his identities)
1. Gone are his dog (alter ego) and the amphitheatre;
(p. 12)
2. The family and acquaitances– the others to whom
the self relates.
•
3.
4.
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a crowd of new faces in the village, (more next page)
Searching for the self by imitation  he is
astonished to discover a beard on his own chin
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!"
Rip Van Winkle
A New Critical Approach
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Narrative elements (3): changes in the environment
Judith Gardenier
"as ragged and wild as
if they belonged to
nobody"
Vedder
Brommel: school
master
 "fresh comely
woman" with a child.
 His wife dies.
(The shrewd tamed)
(Authorities gone)
dead
In congress
Rip Van Winkle
A New Critical Approach
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Narrative elements (3): changes
perpetual club of the
sages (p. 7) 
There was a busy,
bustling disputations
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 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. 17 self-important man’s return;
-- the historian
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.
Rip Van Winkle (2)
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 shows 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.
Rip Van Winkle (2)
Narrative frames (1) --contradictory
beginning and ending -- used to establish
credibility?
 Beginning –
• Knickerbocker's published history--
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is known for
its "scrupulous accuracy.“ (pp. 3-4)
• His errors and follies his imprint on New-Year
cakes.
Ending – K: the setting, witness account, certificate.
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.
pp. 8-9 –away from the human world: talking to the
dog and contemplating the landscape on a green
knoll;
P. 9 – stranger – dress of antiquity to another
time zone? (Or the haunting of Hendrick Hudson
as the past?)
p. 10 – amphitheatre –another stage;
P. 11 – Dutch alcohol  sleep --back to the past?
Rip Van Winkle in Context
Washington Irving
Any ideas?
It embodies historical changes
(in literature, in the U.S. history
and in Irving’s life),
but not escapism.
“Rip Van Winkle” in Literary
Context
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Significant in U.S. Literary history,
national identity.
Adding national colors (landscape,
history, immigrants) to a German folklore;
“A national fantasy of escape” from
responsibility (Rust 171)
“Rip Van Winkle” in Literary
Context
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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). (Cf. Evans)
 but is it a story of escape or the U.S. for all?
“Rip Van Winkle” in Literary
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)
“Rip Van Winkle” (1819) in U.S. Context;
set sometime in between 1750 and 1799
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Before the Revolutionary war, NY is slow-pace and rural.
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.
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.'“ )
RVW/Irving in Historical Context
(2): 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:
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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)
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;
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)
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 Short-Story Writers Before 1880. Ed. Bobby Ellen Kimbel, et
al, Bowling Green State University. The Gale Group, 1988. pp. 171188.
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 (Prehistory-1790s). Ed. Joyce Moss and George
Wilson, Gale Research, 1997.