Social Changes Reflected In Washington Irving's American Legends

Washington Irving was the first American writer who gained international reputation, and also a representative of American Romanticists in early American literary history. His works range from the fantastic tales to the serious historical biographies, but two American legends Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are undoubtedly the most popular ones. living's other legends with American background are mainly collected in the fourth part of Tales of a Traveler, which includes The Devil and Tom Walker, Wolfert Webber, or the Golden Dreams and The Adventure of the Black Fisherman. Through transplanting the European folklore to American land, Irving created American legends, but this method is often regarded as a severe imitation of European literature. By analyzing these American legends from a historical perspective, this thesis tries to reveal that Irving's American legends are not imitations, but the reflections of social changes in American society from the end of the Revolution to the 1820s.The introduction section will begin with reviewing two opposite criticisms towards Irving's works, as well as analyzing the historical background when these American legends published. The first chapter, through analyzing the conflicts of...