- the Origins of Fiction and American Identity: a Comparison of Irving and Cooper

Brands, H. W., T. H. Breen, R. Hal Williams, and Ariela Julie. Gross. American stories: a history of the United States. Boston: PEARSON, 2015.

Washington Irving was the youngest of eleven children, born into a somewhat wealthy New York City merchant family in 1783. He wrote for newspapers, journals, and magazines in his twenties. Shortly afterward, he worked in publishing and editing. As a true belletrist, Erving found great enjoyment in writing. His first notable book, (which he heralded the release of with a fanciful precursor,) was A History of New York (1809), published under one of his many clever, pseudonyms “Diedrich Knickerbocker.”

As the new world struggled to gain impendence from its mother country, Britain, native authors also try to develop their own style of writings. It quickly became evident that the search for a native literature became a national obsession. Then with the triumph of American independence, many at the time saw this as a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Greatness came with a strong nation and thousands of poems and stories that still shape our nation. The recent revolution greatly expressed the heart of the American people. However, it would take another fifty years of development throughout American before it produced the first great generation of American writers such as, Washington Irving, Ralph

In the 1700’s, the older generation of Americans was dedicated to making young people into moral, upright citizens. Books, magazines, and poetry were written to influence the readers toward morality, often by presenting unfavorable consequences if not obeyed. These kinds of texts were written in response to the growing apprehension Americans had toward anything unfamiliar or new. The Coquette and Wieland: or, The Transformation are two novels that display the worry and fear that plagued America during the time. In The Coquette, Hannah Webster Foster focuses on the fear of promiscuity, especially among women. Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown explores the fear of the alien. Though they focus on different anxieties, each gives important insight into what American life was like and the major issues of the time.

Parini, Jay, ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.

Two renowned writers during that literary period was Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe. Washington Irving was born April 3, 1783, in New York City, New York. He was a romanticist author, essayist, historian, editor, and diplomat of the early 19th century. Irving was best known for the father of American literature and being the first American to make a living only from writing such as biographical works and short stories like “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. These novels are both an Americanized version of German folk tales and are widely popular in both England and the United States. Having been greatly influenced by European authors, Irving has his own style of writing. In his narrative writing, Irving mostly wrote

The present paper traces the origins of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland and Robert Coover’s dramatic monologue Rip Awake to Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle” and attempts to analyze both adaptations. Though Irving’s short story dates back to an earlier time period in the American landscape, it nonetheless forms the foundation of both Pynchon’s and Coover’s work. Though Irving’s writing style has often been called exceedingly British sounding, his narratives are steeped in American history and the American way of life. Both Thomas Pynchon and Robert Coover on the other hand belong to the postmodern age and deal with experimental fiction in America. If Pynchon’s fiction is described as encyclopedic, labyrinthine and convoluted then Coover’s is termed otherworldly and surreal. Despite the fact that most critics see both Pynchon and Cooveras being as dissimilar as chalk and cheese, they nonetheless use experimental forms and techniques that are distinctly postmodern as the present study will depict.

American Romanticism set the tone for typical American literature. James Fenimore Cooper set the bar with the archetypal traits that define American literature, appearing from books like The Last of the Mohicans to current films like Indiana Jones’s adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark. Three of the archetypal traits that appear in both timeless classics and current masterpieces are a brave faultless hero, daring rescues, and loyal companions.

"Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace" (Alder). Washington Irving was a very successful American author who wrote countless stories. He was and still is a great role model for many authors. Washington Irving is firmly planted into the tapestry of American literature because of his use of mood, symbolism, and imagery in “The Devil and Tom Walker.”

American writers have expressed their political and social views through their writing by attempting to establish a voice separate from Britain’s. Their fear of individual and national failure and their thirst for power consumes them and is evident in their writing. Washington Irving and Herman Melville involve the occupation of lawyers and Justices to bring in a patriotic element to influence residents of the young country as a way to share their concerns and inspire ambition. Their usage of metaphors and metonymy subtly convey a message of hope to white residents while, deflating the optimism of the soon to be freed slaves. This essay will prove that a critical reading of Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and Irving’s “The Legend of

The impact Raymond Carver had on his students and Jay McInerney led them both to be American writers, and led to the short piece of American Literature that McInerney wrote about his mentor. Perhaps there were no common themes, fictional heroes, or entertaining plotlines; instead, there was a short story that digs at American Literature’s core, the diversity of America. American Literature is what one makes it to be, not everything is American Literature, but every piece of literature has parts that are

When you think of early American literature, debates, and speeches most of what would come to mind would be that of early American settlers and mid century revolutionist. However some equally influential individuals whose writings are often overlooked would be that of poets and story writers. Their writing can establish the same connections and thought provoking questions.

A number of events influenced the characteristics of American personality. In the 18th century, the Americans fought for their freedom in skirmishes with France and Britain. Nationalism, a love for one’s country, developed under president Andrew Jackson, which helped influence “art for art’s sake.” American Writers, novelists, and poets developed their own distinctive styles in this case. One example is The Last of the Mohicans by Fenimore Cooper. Many of these literary works appeared in the event of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

The development of American Literature, much like the development of the nation, began in earnest, springing from a Romantic ideology that honored individualism and visionary idealism. As the nation broke away from the traditions of European Romanticism, America forged its own unique romantic style that would resonate through future generations of literary works. Through periods of momentous change, the fundamentally Romantic nature of American literature held fast, a fact clearly demonstrated in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In an era of post-war disillusionment, when idealism succumbed to hedonistic materialism, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s romantically charged novel,

Brendan Driscoll is a member of The Booklist, a group of writers who write about famous authors and the influences that flew from their novels. One of his articles deals with Washington Irving and the influences his short stories have made in American history of literature. The article, despite appearing very brief in sentences, describes a good history of why Irving is important in American literature. The article gained its details of Irving’s past from an older article written by Andrew Burstein, a critic who is the author of the article, “The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving”. Burstein’s article describes why Irving is the first American author to make a living at writing, and how later authors, Edgar Allan Poe as an