The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Summary
Washington Irving

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving 7Vashington Irving was born in New York in 1783. He was strongly influenced by the Dutch culture of that area, which maintained a distinctive iden... 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, Hoffman explains how “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” dramatizes a conflict between two cultures—those of the Yankee city-dweller and the backwoodsman—... Read more

In the following excerpt, Roth examines the conflict between “the active and the imaginative life” in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow... Read more

In the following essay, Benoit explores Ichabod's loss of the imaginative bond between man and the world in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” “There used to be gods in everyth... Read more

The folktale is a typical Romantic piece. This genre includes many different stylistic elements which Washington Irving uses to create "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." He not only uses these elements ... Read more