The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Wr - Washington Irving [240]
3 (p. 50) for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number: Irving alludes to a theory propounded by a number of British and European scholars, most notably the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte du Buffon (1707-1788). Buffon’s account of the “degenerate” form of plant and animal specimens taken from the North American continent was refuted by Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785).
4 (p. 51) humble lovers of the picturesque: The picturesque was a well-defined school of aesthetics that was part of the romantic reaction against neoclassical formalism. Its principles were outlined and promoted by English writer William Gilpin (1724-1804), English landscape designer Sir Uvedale Price (1747-1829), and English classical scholar Sir Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824), among others. Irving was close friends with a number of painters associated with the picturesque movement, including Washington Allston (1779-1843), Gilbert Stuart Newton (1794-1835), and C. R. Leslie (1794-1859); Leslie is featured in Irving’s sketch “The Wife” (although it is Allston upon whom the details of the story are based).
5 (p. 52) The Voyage: Crossing the Atlantic from Europe to America often symbolized the erasure of one’s ties to the “Old World” in exchange for the opportunity to recreate oneself in the New. In “The Voyage,” Irving reverses this process and renders it ironic. He realizes that the Atlantic “interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes” (p. 53). At the same time, despite the fact that he is traveling back to the home of his forefathers, on his arrival he feels himself to be “a stranger in the land” (p. 57). Irving’s presentation of Geoffrey Crayon as enduring a self-imposed exile anticipates a tradition in American literature of characters who define their individuality in terms of the loss, or the absence, of cultural belonging (see the Introduction, p. xxv).
6 (p. 58) Roscoe: William Roscoe (1753-1831) was an English historian and author whose principal historical work was The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1795). In this sketch Irving presents Roscoe as an exemplary model for American writers because of how he “effected [in his life a] union of commerce and the intellectual pursuits, [and] ... practically proved how beautifully they may be brought to harmonize, and to benefit each other” (pp. 60-61).
7 (p. 65) The Wife: In this sketch Irving presents marriage as a romantic ideal. Crayon characterizes a wife as “a ministering angel” in the “dark hour of adversity” (p. 68), a stark contrast with the “terrible virago” Dame Van Winkle, in the subsequent sketch (p. 78).
8 (p. 72) Rip Van Winkle: One of Irving’s best known stories, “Rip Van Winkle” marks the first time Irving reintroduced Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictional compiler of A History of New York (1809). “Rip Van Winkle” can be read as an historical allegory that prepares the way for American literature by lengthening a reader’s sense of history through a deliberate forgetting of the American Revolution (see the Introduction, pp. xviii-xx).
9 (p. 87) Hendrick Hudson: English explorer Henry Hudson (1565?-1611?) discovered the Hudson River while searching for a Northwest Passage to India. In 1610 he led an expedition into Hudson Bay, Canada; the voyage ended in mutiny in 1611, when Hudson, his son, and seven crew members were set adrift in an open boat and never seen again.
10 (p. 89) a little German superstition about the Emperor Frederick der Rothbart, and the Kypphaüser mountain: The Kyffhäuser is a mountain located in central Germany. According to German legend, Frederick I—German king (1152-1190) and Holy Roman Emperor (1155-1190), also known as Frederick Barbarossa or Rothbart (respectively, Italian and German for “Redbeard”)—sleeps in a cave there, awakening every hundred years to see if his country needs his leadership. In “Rip Van Winkle,” Irving creates a similar legend for Henry