Rip Van Winkle Summary
Washington Irving

"Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving Washington Irving was born in 1783 in New York City, shortly before the end of the American Revolution. He grew up in an era of rapid change for New York and t... Read more

Biography EssayWashington Irving was America's first successful professional man of letters, a gifted teller of tales, especially as a native humorist, a romantic historian, and an influential prose s... Read more

Considered the first professional man of letters in the United States, Washington Irving was influential in the development of the short story form and helped to gain international respect for fledgli... Read more

At the outset of Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall (1822) Geoffrey Crayon, the author's quasi-autobiographical persona, makes the following observation: "I have always had an opinion that much good... Read more

Washington Irving was so important a figure, so self-conscious a writer, and so given to romantic irony and satirizing authorship that the meagerness of his literary criticism and scholarship is disa... Read more

Washington Irving told an anecdote of his youth which shows both his propensity to delight in stories as well as his skepticism concerning them. A "lively boy, full of curiosity, of easy faith, and p... Read more

Washington Irving, America's first professional man of letters, won his international reputation in the 1820s as a literary cosmopolitan, an interpreter especially of English and Spanish character, cu... Read more

In the following essay, Dawson contends that the forest scene in “Rip Van Winkle” is gothic rather than comic and that the story is not anti-feminist. While compiling a notebook of re... Read more

Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" symbolizes the European sentiment towards the new society in American and establishes and identity prior and post to the American Revolution. The charact... Read more

In this story, there seems to be something mythical and something factual. The myth is the long night sleep of Rip and the fact is the changing events of the revolution. In this story, the author g... Read more

Women have and continue struggling being classified as less than men from the beginning of creation. Historically, women were often given less power socially and politically, when things for their hus... Read more

Washington Irving proved all the people in Europe and England who felt that America would never develop a literary voice of its own wrong. He was the youngest and not-too-well-educated son of a har... Read more