Rip Van Winkle Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 63 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Rip Van Winkle.

Rip Van Winkle Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 63 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Rip Van Winkle.
This section contains 5,359 words
(approx. 14 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Rip Van Winkle Study Guide

In 1912 an eminent Dutch historian, Tieman De Vries by name, published under the title of Dutch History, Art and Literature for Americans a series of lectures he had delivered at The University of Chicago. A large part of this book is devoted to a monumentally inept attack on Washington Irving for having, in "Rip Van Winkle," characterized the Dutch people as stupid, lazy, and credulous. For his overwhelming blow the author, protesting great reluctance and sadness, brings forth the revelation that "Rip" is not the "original" story that Irving is "generally given credit for," anyway. The bitter truth, he discloses, is that the tale had been told before: its embryo is a myth about an ancient Greek named Epimenides, and this germ was "fully developed" by Erasmus (a citizen of Rotterdam) in 1496. In the myth Epimenides was sent to look for a sheep, lay down in a...

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This section contains 5,359 words
(approx. 14 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Rip Van Winkle Study Guide
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Rip Van Winkle from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.