Antebellum America, 1784-1865 |
Washington Irving, 1783-1859"I was always fond of vising new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners." The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Mark Canada, professor, University of North Carolina at Pembroke Before the Revolutionary War, American literature--from Christopher Columbus's travel accounts to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography--had been primarily nonfictional narratives, sermons, essays, diaries, and imitations of English verse, most of it written in private or shared in small circles. With the political revolution against England, however, came a cultural revolution, and Americans slowly began to build an independent cultural identity, which included a strong literary component. For the first time, America had a significant number of men and women of letters--that is, writers who created works appreciated for their aesthetic value and who made a career or at least a serious avocation of literature. The first of these writers was Washington Irving, whose Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, first published in 1819, was a sensation in England and helped build the United States' reputation for creative literature. Over the remainder of his career, which included Tales of the Alhambra and many other books, Irving was the most famous and most widely respected literary figure in America. Thanks in part to developments in publishing technology, Irving also was one of the few Americanss to make substantial money from writing. By 1829, he had made more than $23,000 from his writing, and he eventually bought the plates from which his works were published in order to protect his own rights to proceeds from them. A transitional figure, Irving somewhat ironically contributed to America's literary independence while producing work that was distinctively European in content and style. Like his contemporary James Fenimore Cooper, Irving proved that Americans could write European literature as well as Europeans could. His masterful use of personae, stylized prose, and use of European legend all demonstrate the strong influence of the Old World on his work. Indeed, the sketches and tales in The Sketch Book show Irving's affection for the antiquity of Europe and for the past in general. This attention to the past, as Irving scholar William P. Kelly has noted, was one reason for Irving's success with his American audience. Kelly points out that Americans, recently severed from their European heritage, were struggling with an identity crisis at the time they were reading Irving's work, which itself looks both forward and backward. (xii). Irving is a major figure in the history of the short story in America. Indeed, Fred Lewis Pattee begins his book The Development of the American Short Story with Irving and identifies The Sketch Book, which contains "Rip Van Winkle" and the "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," as the starting point for this literary form in the United States. Pattee notes that the short story suited Irving, who tended to write in "spurts and dashes": "He did not deliberately choose the shortened form: he fell into it automatically because of his temperament, his natural indolence that forbade long-continued efforts, his powerful yet volatile emotions, and his early literary training in the school of Addison and Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson" (6). Another striking characteristic of Irving's writing is the preponderance of visual imagery. A painter himself, Irving often drew verbal pictures in his essays and stories, and the title of his most famous work makes a double reference to visual art: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Bibliography
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Chronology1783: born in Manhattan, New
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Updated June 4, 1999 | canada@sassette.uncp.edu | © Mark Canada, 1999
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