#Pure imagination just a gent free#

This enrages Katrina's other suitor, the brutish and masculine Abraham Van Brunt-or 'Brom Bones'-who begins terrorizing the gullible and nervous Ichabod with tales of the ghostly Horseman. Ichabod becomes enamoured with Katrina Van Tassel, the heiress to a vast, wealthy farm. The story revolves around Ichabod Crane, a slight, bookish schoolmaster, who is viewed as an outsider in the community. 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' is also narrated by Knickerbocker and again utilizes a supernatural occurrence as its driving plot device, featuring a demonic 'Headless Horseman' who preys on an isolated village.

#Pure imagination just a gent free#

Did Rip really sleep in the mountains for years, or has he invented this bizarre account merely as a subterfuge for remaining free from responsibility and obligation? His tale of wonder is met with mixed responses from the community. He slept through the American Revolution-a great surprise for the British Loyalist Rip-his wife is now dead, and the townspeople barely remember him. Returning to the inhabited world, Rip discovers that he has, in fact, slept for over twenty years, and the world he once knew has changed greatly. He falls into a deep sleep and awakens transformed-he appears to have aged decades overnight. They come upon a party of eccentric elderly men playing ninepins-based on Henry Hudson and his men-and Rip drinks heavily from the keg. As evening approaches, Rip encounters a little old man, dressed in old-fashioned Dutch garb, who asks for Rip's help in carrying a keg of liquor. One day, Rip and Wolf journey high into the Catskills-dubbed the 'fairy mountains' early in the text. Tormented by his shrewish wife, Rip neglects his farm and family for the pleasures of alcohol and wandering in the forest, accompanied by his loyal dog, Wolf. Those tales is the story of Rip Van Winkle, a congenial, though notoriously lazy peasant living outside of the Catskills in the 1750s. Knickerbocker relates the plot, claiming that he has heard tales of supernatural events in Dutch settlements in the Catskill Mountains. 'Rip Van Winkle' is written in the form of a paper composed by 'Diedrich Knickerbocker,' one of Irving's recurring narrators.

Though The Sketch Book consists of seven 'sketches'-ranging from fictional prose to nonfiction criticism-'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' are the collection's two best known works and the only two pieces to receive widespread critical and popular attention.

Both tales have became canonical works of children's literature, inspiring numerous illustrated editions as well as film, stage, and television adaptations. Based on European folktales, 'Rip Van Winkle' and ' Sleepy Hollow' present stories of men who find their lives transformed by supernatural forces.

The volume was an instant and immense popular success and solidified Irving's reputation in Europe as an American literary artist, a sobriquet that many Europeans of the era had viewed as a contradiction. is not widely known by contemporary audiences, the prose collection contains two of the most iconic and famous American short stories of all time-'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.' The Sketch Book is indisputably Irving's most important and lasting work. Though the title of Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. The following entry presents criticism on Irving's two volume collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (Has also written under the pseudonyms Geoffrey Crayon, Diedrich Knickerbocker, Fray Antonio Agapida, Launcelot Langstaff, and Jonathan Oldstyle) American short story writer, essayist, biographer, and historian. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.