RIP VAN WINKLE

'''Rip Van Winkle''' is a story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection of stories entitled ''The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon''.

Contents

Plot

Characters

References to actual history

Literary origins

Adaptations

See also

References

External links

Plot

The story is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle, a villager of Dutch descent, lives in a nice village at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains. An amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect, he is loved by all but his wife. One autumn day he escapes his nagging wife by wandering up the mountains. After encountering strangely dressed men, rumored to be the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew, who are playing nine-pins, and after drinking some of their liquor, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up twenty years later and returns to his village. He finds out that his wife is dead and his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he hails himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that in the meantime the American Revolution has taken place. An old local recognizes him, however, and Rip's now grown daughter eventually puts him up. As Rip resumes his habit of idleness in the village, and his tale is solemnly believed by the old Dutch settlers, certain hen-pecked husbands especially wish they shared Rip's luck.

Characters

★ 'Rip Van Winkle' - a henpecked husband who loathes 'profitable labour'.

★ 'Dame Van Winkle' - Rip Van Winkle's oppressive wife.

★ 'Rip' - Rip Van Winkle's son.

★ 'Judith Gardenier' - Rip Van Winkle's daughter.

★ 'Derrick Van Bummel' - the local schoolmaster and later a member of Congress.

★ 'Nicholas Vedder' - the landlord of the local inn.

★ 'Mr Doolittle' - a hotel owner.

References to actual history

★ Rip Van Winkle's ancestor supposedly fought with Peter Stuyvesant at the siege of Fort Christina in Delaware

★ Rip and other men are said to gather around a portrait of George III.

★ The name George Washington appears in letters beneath a picture of the General at the old inn.

★ The Battle of Bunker Hill is mentioned by the haranguer.

★ Brom Dutcher is said to have fought in the Battle of Stony Point.

★ Henry Hudson is said to have known the Hudson River was inhabited by strange beings.

Literary origins

The story is a close adaptation of ''Peter Klaus the Goatherd'' by J.C.C. Nachtigal, which is a shorter story set in a German village. The choice of "Van Winkle" for the character's name may have been influenced by the fact that Irving's New York publisher was C. S. Van Winkle.
It is also close to ''Karl Katz'', a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. This story is almost identical. One difference is when he sees dwarfs playing a game of ninepins in a mountain meadow, he joins the game. The dwarfs give him a magic drink that makes him fall asleep for twenty years. It is implied that the dwarfs are teaching him a lesson about laziness.
The story is also similar to the ancient Jewish story about Honi the Circle-Maker 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 aleep 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. Note also that the family name of Honi is as well a term of geometry ('M'agel' is Hebrew for 'circle maker'), as well as the family name of Rip ('Winkel' is German for 'angle').
The story is also similar to a 3rd century AD Chinese tale of Ranka, as retold in Lionel Giles in ''A Gallery of Chinese Immortals.''
The original story was by Diogenes Laertius, an Epicurean philosopher c. early half third century, in his book ''On the Lives, Opinions, and Sayings of Famous Philosophers''. The story is in Chapter ten in his section on the Seven Sages, who were the precursors to the first philosophers. The sage was Epimenides. Apparently Epimenides went to sleep in a cave for fifty-seven years. But unfortunately, 'he became old in as many days as he had slept years'. Although according to the different sources that Diogenes relates, Epimenides lived to be one hundred and fifty-seven years, two hundred and ninety-nine years, or one hundred and fifty-four years.¹

Adaptations

The story has been adapted for other media for the last two centuries, from stage plays to an operetta to cartoons to films. Actor Joseph Jefferson was most associated with the character on the 19th century stage and made a series of short films in 1896 recreating scenes from his stage adaptation, and which are collectively in the US National Film Registry. Jefferson's son Thomas followed in his father's footsteps and also played the character in a number of early 20th century films.

See also

★ Rip Van Winkle (operetta)

★ Rip Van Wink from ''The Beano''

★ Rip Van Winkle (Hellsing) from ''Hellsing''

References

External links

'Sources'

★ "Rip Van Winkle", illustrated by N. C. Wyeth (1921).

★ "Rip Van Winkle", illustrated by Arthur Rackham (1905).

★ "Rip Van Winkle", e-text from Bartleby.

★ "Rip Van Winkle", audio version from 1946.

★ "Rip Van Winkle", 1896 film.
'Other'

★ Rip Van Winkle Study Guide

★ Irving in Birmingham
¹