Discuss and analyze how Washington Irving short stories, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” use folkloric elements (myths, legends, superstition) as the primary stylistic feature of his fiction. In particular, you might focus on how his fiction’s celebration of myth signals broader cultural anxieties about the dramatic changes taking place in America society in the 1820s. Why does his tales celebrate the past, tradition, myth, oral storytelling? How does his tales convey a nostalgia for the past? What social anxieties about the present does his tales convey? What particular social changes does his tales bemoan? For this prompt, your essay, for instance, might focus on how his tales can be interpreted as a criticism of the legacy of the Enlightenment (i.e. Franklin?). Your essay could do so by focusing your response on the characters of Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle. But you might also focus on the fictional character of Dietrich Knickerbocker and the reasons why Irving presents his fictional tales as being “found narratives” rather than ones authored by himself.
