Notes on "Rip Van Winkle"

This post supports the study of the Module 2, Short Fiction, of the Core Course “Modes of Fiction”, assigned for the Semester 3 students of the MA English programme at CMS College. 

    

About Netherlands
Also called Holland. It is located in Western Europe. 
The term “Dutch” indicates its language and people.
A major colonial power, right from the 15th century.
Dutch Settlements in the Americas
The Dutch government had chartered the Dutch East India Company which sent explorers 
under the command of Henry Hudson who arrived in 1609 and mapped what is now known as the Hudson River.
Dutch settlement in the Americas started in 1613. One area of settlement was named New Amsterdam (after the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam); later, it was given over to the British as part of a treaty, who renamed it “New York”. 
The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence, resulted in the overthrow of British rule in the colonies and the establishment of the United States of America.

George III was the King of Great Britain. 
George Washington becomes the first President of the USA.

Our story revolves round these pointers: the Dutch settlement in North America, control of these areas by the British, and the American Revolutionary War resulting in the formation of the USA.
As is common among settler groups, there emerges tales that are not properly researched and documented, but pass on to be the history of the homeland, the transit and the settlement.

The Author

Washington Irving:  (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., commonly referred to as The Sketch Book, is a collection of 34 essays and short stories written by him. It was published serially throughout 1819 and 1820. The collection includes two of Irving's best-known stories, attributed to the fictional Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle".

 Irving was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe. He encouraged American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also admired by some European writers, including Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Francis Jeffrey, and Charles Dickens. As America's first genuine internationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as a legitimate profession, and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement.

The Background: Introducing Diedrich Knickerbocker

In late 1809, Irving completed work on his first major book, A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), a satire on self-important local history and contemporary politics. Prior to its publication, Irving started a hoax akin to today's viral marketing campaigns; he placed a series of missing person adverts in New York newspapers seeking information on Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian who had allegedly gone missing from his hotel in New York City. As part of the ruse, Irving placed a notice—allegedly from the hotel's proprietor—informing readers that if Mr. Knickerbocker failed to return to the hotel to pay his bill, he would publish a manuscript Knickerbocker had left behind. 

Unsuspecting readers followed the story of Knickerbocker and his manuscript with interest, and some New York city officials were concerned enough about the missing historian that they considered offering a reward for his safe return. Riding the wave of public interest he had created with his hoax, Irving—adopting the pseudonym of his Dutch historian—published A History of New York on December 6, 1809, to immediate critical and popular success. "It took with the public", Irving remarked, "and gave me celebrity, as an original work was something remarkable and uncommon in America".

Characters

Rip Van Winkle                 A henpecked husband who loathes 'profitable labor'. Meek, easygoing, never-do-well resident of the village who wanders off to the mountains and meets strange men playing ninepins.

Dame Van Winkle            Rip Van Winkle's  nagging wife.

Rip Van Winkle, Jr.          Rip Van Winkle's never-do-well son.

Judith Gardenier              Rip Van Winkle's married daughter. She takes her father in after he returns from his sleep.

Derrick Van Bummel       The local schoolmaster and later a member of Congress.

Nicholas Vedder              Landlord of the local inn where menfolk congregate.

Van Schaick                       The local parson.

Jonathan Doolittle           Owner of the Union Hotel, the establishment that replaced the village inn.

Wolf                                   Rip's faithful dog, who does not recognize him when he wakes up

Man carrying keg up the mountain         The ghost of Englishman Henry Hudson, explorer of the Hudson River.

Ninepin bowlers              The ghosts of Henry Hudson’s crewmen from his ship, the Half-Moon. They share purple magic liquor with Rip Van Winkle and play a game of ninepins.

Brom Dutcher                   Neighbor of Rip who went off to war while Rip was sleeping.

Old woman                       Woman who identifies Rip when he returns to the village after his sleep.

Peter Vanderdonk           The oldest resident of the village. He confirms Rip’s identity and cites evidence indicating Rip’s strange tale is true.

Mr. Gardenier                  Judith Gardenier’s husband, a farmer. Crabbby Villager

Rip Van Winkle III            Rip Van Winkle’s infant grandchild. His mother is Judith Gardenier.

Summary

Dutch: an ethnic group native to the Netherlands

Dutch presence and colonisation of the US, including areas of New York, from 17th c.

The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). In a pleasant village, at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains, lives the kindly Rip Van Winkle, a colonial British-American villager of Dutch descent. Rip is an amiable man who enjoys solitary activities in the wilderness, but is also loved by all in town—especially the children to whom he tells stories and gives toys. However, a tendency to avoid all gainful labor, for which his nagging wife (Dame Van Winkle) chastises him, allows his home and farm to fall into disarray due to his lazy neglect.

One winter day, Rip is escaping his wife's nagging, wandering up the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name being shouted, Rip discovers that the speaker is a man dressed in antiquated Dutch clothing, carrying a keg up the mountain, who requires Rip's help. Without exchanging words, the two hike up to an amphitheatre-like hollow in which Rip discovers the source of previously-heard thunderous noises: there is a group of other ornately-dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins. Although there is no conversation and Rip does not ask the men who they are or how they know his name, he discreetly begins to drink some of their liquor, and soon falls asleep.

He awakes in unusual circumstances: It seems to be morning, his gun is rotted and rusty, his beard has grown a foot long, and Wolf is nowhere to be found. Rip returns to his village where he finds that he recognizes no one. Asking around, he discovers that his wife has died and that his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he proclaims himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that the American Revolution has taken place; George III's portrait on the town inn has been replaced by that of George Washington. Rip is also disturbed to find another man is being called Rip Van Winkle (though this is in fact his son, who has now grown up).

The men he met in the mountains, Rip learns, are rumored to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew. Rip is told that he has apparently been away from the village for twenty years. An old local recognizes Rip and Rip's now-adult daughter takes him in. Rip resumes his habitual idleness, and his tale is solemnly taken to heart by the Dutch settlers, with other hen-pecked husbands, after hearing his story, wishing they could share in Rip's good luck, and have the luxury of sleeping through the hardships of war.

"Rip Van Winkle" as a Fairy Tale

In many ways the story is a classic European "faerie tale" of a man who is actually rewarded for helping the faeries move their barrel. They advance him to a time in life where he is free of his nagging wife and is now old enough for it be respectable for him to take it easy and play with children, working when he wants to instead of when he has to, supported by his loving, grown children.

Literary Forerunners/ Parallels

German folktale "Peter Klaus" by Johann Karl Christoph Nachtigal, a shorter story set in a German village.

The ancient Jewish story about Honi M'agel who falls asleep after asking a man why he is planting a carob tree which traditionally takes 70 years to mature, making it virtually impossible to ever benefit from the tree's fruit. After this exchange, he falls asleep on the ground and is miraculously covered by a rock and remains out of sight for 70 years. When he awakens, he finds a fully mature tree and that he has a grandson. When nobody believes that he is Honi, he prays to God and God takes him from this world.

"The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", (in the Christian tradition) recounting a group of early Christians who hid in a cave about 250 AD, to escape the persecution of Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius, fell into a miraculous sleep and woke some 200 years later during the reign of Theodosius II, to discover that the city and the whole Empire had become Christian. This Christian story is recounted by Islam and appears in a famous Sura of the Koran, Sura Al-Kahf. The story recalls a group of young monotheists escaping from persecution within a cave and emerging hundreds of years later. Irving, who wrote a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, may have been familiar with the story.

A 3rd-century AD Chinese tale of Ranka, as retold by Lionel Giles in A Gallery of Chinese Immortals, and an 8th-century Japanese tale, "Urashima Tarō".

In Orkney there is a similar folktale linked to the burial mound of Salt Knowe adjacent to the Ring of Brodgar. A drunken fiddler on his way home hears music from the mound. He finds a way in and finds the trowes (Trolls) having a party. He stays and plays for two hours, then makes his way home to Stenness, where he discovers fifty years have passed. The Orkney Rangers believe this may be one source for Washington Irving's tale, because his father was an Orcadian from the island of Shapinsay and would almost certainly have known the tale.

The story of Niamh and Oisin ( Ireland) has a similar theme. Oisin falls in love with the beautiful Niamh and leaves with her on her snow white horse to Tir Na nOg – the land of the ever-young. Missing his family and friends, he asks to pay them a visit. Niamh lends him her horse, warning him never to dismount, and he travels back to Ireland. But three hundred years have passed; his family and fellow warriors are all dead. Some men are trying to move a boulder. Oisin reaches down to help them. The girth of the horse's saddle snaps and he falls to the ground. Before the watching eyes of the men he becomes a very, very old man.

The story of Epimenides in On the Lives, Opinions, and Sayings of Famous Philosophers, (book by Diogenes Laertius, an Epicurean philosopher of the third century): in chapter ten in his section on the Seven Sages of Greece, precursors to the first philosophers. The sage Epimenides is said to have slept in a cave for fifty-seven years. But unfortunately, "he became old in as many days as he had slept years".

In Bhagavatam, there is a story of Muchukunda, King of Ikshavaku dynasty, who slept for a long time. According to Hinduism, Muchukunda was an ancestor of Sri Rama. Muchukunda had helped Indra fight against Asuras (demons). Once, in a battle, the Devas (deities) were threatened by the Asuras(demons). The Gods sought help from king Muchukunda. King Muchukunda agreed to help them and fought against the demons for a long time. Since the deities did not have an able commander, king Muchukunda protected them against the demonic onslaught, until the deities got an able commander like Kartikeya, the son of Lord Shiva. Then Indra said to the king Muchukunda, "O king, we, the deities are indebted to you for the help and protection which you have given us, by sacrificing your own family life. Here in the heaven, one year equals three hundred and sixty years of the earth. Since, it has been a long time, there is no sign of your kingdom and family because it has been destroyed with the passage of time. We are happy and pleased with you, so ask for any boon except Moksha (liberation)". While fighting on the side of the deities, king Muchukunda did not get an opportunity to sleep even for a moment. Now, since his responsibilities were over, overcome by tiredness, he was feeling very sleepy. So, he said, "O King of the deities, I want to sleep. Anyone who dares to disturb my sleep should get burnt to ashes immediately". Indra said, "So be it, go to the earth and enjoy your sleep, one who awakens you would be reduced to ashes". After this, king Muchukunda descended to earth and selected a cave, where he could sleep without being disturbed. A lot of time had passed during his sleeping years. Finally, Sri Krishna lured Kalayavana into the cave where Muchukunda was sleeping. Kalayavana inadvertently woke up Muchukunda and was burnt to ashes when Muchukunda's gaze fell upon him.

Pseudohistory

Tales and stories carried down from the homeland, and also built up in course of time. It will be glorified versions which may have strayed from reality. Such fictionalised history has become a feature of literature.

How does this story become pseudohistory?

It is based on established history. But matters in the story are not authentic. (Here, note that it is not presented as fiction either: to give a case, the movie “Titanic” has a historic base, but the plot in the film is not so. However, the authors do not make any claim that it is history. Here in Rip Van Winkle, there is a claim, though by a fictitious author Knickerbocker.

The involvement of a pseudo historian: here, we need to read external elements too. The real author has created an impression that the story is given by a historian.

Lack of objectivity: at a few points in the story, we are told that it depends not on documented history, but on tales.

Mention of the supernatural

Pseudohistory in literature is not falsehood. The author doesn’t want it to be recorded as history. His intentions are clear: satire: on the tendency to weave out history from stories (as was common among the settlers), glorifying one’s own culture and history beyond proportions. Humour and pathos are equally woven into the story.

Ponder on these!

Humour and satire in the work

Pseudohistory

Characterisation in "Rip Van Winkle"

Fairy tale