Research Paper On Rip Van Winkle

“Rip Van Winkle”: An Archaic Story in a New Country Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle” was written in 1819 and relates a tale from the 1790s following the United States’ independence from Great Britain. Prior to Rip’s nap, America is still under colonial rule; but after he wakes, he is now living in a free nation. Rip is unaware of this change, and some scholars debate that Irving retained Rip as an archaism, showing that the transition from colonial rule to independence did not remove all traces of Great Britain. However, others believe that the citizens with whom Rip interacts immediately after he wakes are rapidly expounding all traces of the colonial era in their new republic, including the elderly such as Rip. “Rip Van Winkle” is a story written

Written on the cusp of independence, Rip Van Winkle is often considered to be a story molding the future of American literature; but with no history around which to write his story, Irving adopted an archaic style, as if to feign that America already had a rich history of its own: He “pretended shadow, ruin, [and] decay as prerequisites of imaginative creation; at times, [he] wrote as if America were very old” (Martin 140). Rip slept for approximately 20 years, and upon his return to home, he finds his house in shambles: “He found the house gone to decay—the roof fallen in, the windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges” (Irving 538). The reader learns shortly thereafter that Rip’s wife