Rip Van Winkle's Republic: Washington Irving in History and Memory

Rip Van Winkles Republic: Washington Irving in History and Memory ANDREW BURSTEIN AND NANCY ISENBERG, EDITORS Louisiana State University Press, 2022 214 pp. In the former, Sizemore situates The Sketch Book, which Irving composed during an extended trip to Europe, in relation to the rise of the Grand...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Early American literature 2024, Vol.59 (2), p.495-538
Main Author: Mansouri, Leila
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
American Indians
American Revolution
Consciousness
Essays
Halloween
Historians
History
Memory
Native North Americans
Prose
Slavery
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Summary:Rip Van Winkles Republic: Washington Irving in History and Memory ANDREW BURSTEIN AND NANCY ISENBERG, EDITORS Louisiana State University Press, 2022 214 pp. In the former, Sizemore situates The Sketch Book, which Irving composed during an extended trip to Europe, in relation to the rise of the Grand Tour, which in the wake of the American Revolution became a rite of passage for white, well-off young American men seeking to connect with what they saw as their cultural and civilizational forebears. In doing so, she deftly denaturalizes the Americanness of Irving s literary nationalism, suggesting that it was an ethnically English American identity constituted through real and imaginative travel to Britain that produced early US imperial consciousness and enabled The Sketch Book to envisage an imperial US frontier from which Native Americans naturally vanish. Bradley, who is currently vice president of programs and engagement at Historic Hudson Valley, focuses instead on an aspect of Irving s life in New York City and the Hudson Valley that receives relatively little attention in his prose: slavery in New York State.
ISSN:0012-8163
1534-147X
DOI:10.1353/eal.2024.a934215