Geoffrey Crayon: "The Art of Bookmaking"

You've read the three most renowned stories from Irving's Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon (1819). If you ever wondered about some of the other stories, here's a preview of one in which Irving satirizes the fledgling bookmaking industry and the fears of plagiarizing dead authors:

In one sketch, "The Art of Book Making," Geoffrey Crayon's musings on the "extreme fecundity of the press, and how it comes to pass that so many heads, on which nature seemed to have inflicted the curse of barrenness, should teem with voluminous productions" lead him to conjure a phantasmagoric scene of dispossession and revenge. Having wandered into the reading room of the British Museum library, he discovers "many pale, studious personages, poring intently over dusty volumes, rummaging among mouldy manuscripts, and taking copious notes of their contents." These, he gradually discovers, "were principally authors and in the very act of manufacturing books." But after musing on the ethics of literary borrowing, he falls asleep and dreams that these authors are "a ragged, thread bare throng" of untutored bumpkins, borrowing the "garments" of classic writers in a ridiculous display of "vulgar elegance" (fig. 4). The victims of this literary rapine, a cadre of long-dead authors arrayed in dour portraits on the library walls, then come to life and rise up in a fierce counterrevolution "to claim their rifled property" and chase the plunderers out of the library.

From The Other Panic of 1819

Irivng Tests + Data Sheets

The Irving essay exam is graded. Out of 14 tests, ranging from 53%-104%, the mean score was 84.5%, which is a middling A in the Honors grading scale used in this course.

I've prepared a sample answer key to the Irving essay exam. The answers on this sample key are taken from answers supplied by you, the students, on the test you took Wednesday. All of these are exemplary or near-exemplary responses to the questions posed. Each received the full 10 points. Again, you would do well to study these answers in order to understand the "how" of taking this type of test and what is expected of you.

Available in PDF here: Washington Irving Essay Test - KEY.

Your tests and data sheets will be returned to you Friday morning.

The Spectre Bridegroom in Gothic Literature

Did you know that the "spectre bridegroom" motif is quite common in Gothic literature?

Adapted from folklore and folk ballad, the motif ususally runs something like this: a young man, on the verge of being married to his true love, dies suddenly, but returns from the grave to claim his bride, who typically has "betrayed" him by marrying another man. There are lots of variations on this basic idea, including the betrayal of the woman by the man, among others. A number of Gothic-tradition writers have turned their hand to this theme. It carries the dramatic power of a romance tale, of course — love beyond the grave, love gone bad, all that sort of thing — but also has the capacity to engage issues of gender dynamics, of the balance of cultural power between men and women.

Here's a list of "spectre bride/groom" works:

William Harrison Ainsworth (attributed), "The Spectre Bride"
Göttfried Bürger, "Lenore"
F. Marion Crawford, Man Overboard!
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Wedding Knell"
William Hunt, "The Spectre Bridegroom"

See the note to "The Suffolk Miracle" ballad, below.

Washington Irving, "The Spectre Bridegroom"
Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, "Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter"
Jack London, "Even Unto Death" and "Flush of Gold"

The latter is an expanded version of the former.

Matthew Lewis, "Alonso the Brave and the Fair Imogene"

One of the poems from Lewis' famed Gothic novel The Monk.

Charles Maturin, "Leixlip Castle"
E. Nesbit, "John Charrington's Wedding"
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, "That Never Was on Sea or Land"
Edith Wharton, "Bewitched"
Sarah Wilkinson, "The Midnight Embrace"

Odenwald & "The Spectre Bridegroom"

In reading through "The Spectre Bridegroom" did you wonder exactly what Odenwald means and what it is? Did you look it up? Here are some clues:

First, oden means odes (as in sagas) and wald means forest; thus odenwald means forest of sagas. That's significant because the Odenwald is a place filled with many traditional German legends, particularly ghost stories. Irving's choice of setting is not incidental.

The Odenwald is located in southwestern Germany.The northern and western Odenwald belong to southern Hesse, with the south stretching into Baden. In the northeast, a small part lies in Lower Franconia in Bavaria. People from Hesse, of course, are called Hessians. The Hessians rented out mercenaries to the English to fight the American rebels in the American Revolutionary War. You will recall that the Headless Horseman of legend was a Hessian soldier.

Caricature: Ichabod Crane vs. Brom Bones

Disney actually does a decent job of effectively portraying Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane in due caricature. Recall how Irving caricatures both protagonist and antagonist:

Ichabod Crane: "The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield."

Brom Bones: "The most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb he had received the nickname of BROM BONES, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom."

Watch the animated clip of Brom Bones telling the story of the legendary headless horseman at the Van Tassel estate. Does Ichabod seem like an eligible bachelor?

The Real Sleepy Hollow

John Quidor oil painting
from Smithsonian American Art Museum

Explore the real town of Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County, New York. You can see that Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" still lives on in the imaginations of the residents there.

Rip Van Winkle as Cautionary Tale

We decided that it is difficult to make the case for "Rip Van Winkle" functioning as a "morality tale," but it can be viewed as a cautionary tale. We had a few examples of those when we read The Canterbury Tales last year.

In simple terms, a cautionary tale is a traditional story told in folklore with the purpose of warning its hearer of a particular danger (e.g., playing with matches). The cautionary tale consists of three essential parts.

1. A taboo or prohibition is stated: some act, location, or thing is said to be dangerous.

2. The narrative itself is told: someone disregarded the warning and performed the forbidden act or acted in a prohibitive way.

3. Finally, the violator comes to an unpleasant fate, which is frequently related in large and grisly detail.

So, what is the taboo or danger that Irving warns his readers about in "Rip Van Winkle"? No, he doesn't warn against a life of idleness. He doesn't counsel us not to drink liquor with little people who have large beards and small piggish eyes. His warning is directed to wives: Wives, do not henpeck your husbands. Dame Van Winkle is the termagant transgressor who has henpecked her husband to a point that he wants to escape his intolerable domestic life. We might even consider that she's the cause of Rip's laziness around his house and farm, especially since the other village wives put him to work quite easily around their own homesteads, doing work they can't get their own husband's to do.

And, in the end, who comes to a "bad" end? Not Rip, but the no-name Dame Van Winkle. Her homestead goes to wrack and ruin; she loses her husband, and dies an early death.

Irving based some of his folklore stories on the German folklore tradition, which has a long lineup of short cautionary tales written in verse. You may enjoy some of these from Heinrich Hoffmann such as Cruel Frederick, The Dreadful Story of Pauline and the Matches, The Story of the Inky Boys, The Wild Huntsman, and Slovenly Peter:

See Slovenly Peter! Here he stands,
With his dirty hair and hands.
See! his nails are never cut;
They are grim'd as black as soot;
No water for many weeks,
Has been near his cheeks;
And the sloven, I declare,
Not once this year has combed his hair!
Anything to me is sweeter
Than to see shock-headed Peter.

Rip Van Winkle from 1896

Here is, without a doubt, the earliest film adaptation of Irving's "Rip Van Winkle." Very primitive indeed, replete with dramatic hand gestures, but worth watching because of the eerie resemblance of the Catskill gnome (not the one pictured above) to our resident Larry.

View the 4 minute silent film...