The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Background

The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane (1858) by John Quidor

The story was the longest one published as part of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (commonly referred to as The Sketch Book), which Irving issued serially throughout 1819 and 1820, using the pseudonym "Geoffrey Crayon".[2] Irving wrote The Sketch Book during a tour of Europe, and parts of the tale may also be traced to European origins. Headless horsemen were staples of Northern Europe storytelling, featuring in German, Irish (e.g., Dullahan), Scandinavian (e.g., the Wild Hunt), and British legends, and were included in Robert Burns's Scots poem "Tam o' Shanter" (1790) and Bürger's Der Wilde Jäger, translated as The Wild Huntsman (1796). Usually viewed as omens of ill fortune for those who chose to disregard their apparitions, these spectres found their victims in proud, scheming persons and characters with hubris and arrogance.[3] One particularly influential rendition of this folktale was the last of the "Legenden von Rübezahl" ('Legends of Rübezahl') from J. K. A. Musäus's literary retellings of German folktales Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1783).[4]

After the Battle of White Plains in October 1776, the country south of the Bronx River was abandoned by the Continental Army and occupied by the British. The Americans were fortified north of Peekskill, leaving Westchester County a 30-mile stretch of scorched and desolated no-man's-land, vulnerable to outlaws, raiders, and vigilantes. Besides droves of Loyalist rangers and British light infantry, Hessian Jägers—renowned sharpshooters and horsemen—were among the raiders who often skirmished with Patriot militias.[5] The Headless Horseman may have indeed been based loosely on the discovery of such a corpse found in Sleepy Hollow after a violent skirmish, and later buried by the Van Tassel family, in an unmarked grave in the Old Dutch Burying Ground.[6]

According to another hypothesis, the figure of the "headless rider" Irving could have been drawn from German literature, and more precisely from the Chronicle of Szprotawa by J.G. Kreis written in the first half of the 19th century. In the 19th century, the police counselor Kreis noted that in the previous century, the inhabitants of this city were afraid to move after dusk on Hospitalstrasse (now Sądowa Street) due to the headless rider apparition seen there.[7] In support of the hypothesis, according to information taken from the work by Z.Sinko entitled Polish Reception of Washington Irving's Work: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism from 1988, Walter Scott encouraged Irving to learn German to be able to read stories, ballads, and legends in their native language.[8]

Irving, while he was an aide-de-camp to New York Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod Crane in Sackets Harbor, New York during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814. Irving may have patterned the character after Jesse Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809.[9] Alternatively, it is claimed by many in Tarrytown that Samuel Youngs is the original from whom Irving drew his character.[10] Author Gary Deniss asserts that while Crane is loosely based on Merwin, it may include elements from Youngs's life.[11]

Ichabod Crane, Respectfully Dedicated to Washington Irving. William J. Wilgus (1819–53), artist Chromolithograph, c. 1856

With "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is one of Irving's most anthologized, studied, and adapted sketches. Both stories are often paired together in books and other representations, and both are included in surveys of early American literature and Romanticism.[12] Irving's depictions of regional culture and his themes of progress versus tradition, supernatural intervention in the commonplace, and the plight of the individual outsider in a homogeneous community permeate both stories and helped to develop a unique sense of American cultural and existential selfhood during the early 19th century.[13]


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