American Nationalism—R.I.P.

Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic. By Simon P. Newman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997

In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820. By David Waldstreicher. University of North Carolina Press, 1997

Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States. By Christopher Looby. University of Chicago Press, 1996

Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America . By David S. Shields. University of North Carolina Press, 1997

When Washington Irving disturbs the 20-year slumber of the eponymous hero of his 1819 tale "Rip Van Winkle," the resulting fiction provides a now-familiar allegory of early American nation-formation. As any reader of this journal knows, the tale itself is straightforward. A few years prior to the colonies' revolutionary break with Great Britain, Rip and his dog Wolf together escape from the domestic tyranny of their wife and mistress by setting out on a hunting expedition high into the Catskill mountains. Late in the day, Rip happens upon an anachronistic drinking party peopled by "odd-looking personages" dressed in "antique Dutch fashion" and "playing at nine-pins" (6-7). Rip joins in, serves the drinks, sneaks a few for himself, then sleeps off his hangover for the next two decades. Awakened on election day in the historical context of postrevolutionary America, he shoulders his rusty flintlock and returns to his native village, only to find it largely unrecognizable: his neighbors look at him strangely; the town itself is more populated; rows of houses have sprung up; his own house has fallen into disrepair; even his dog seems to have forgotten him. More importantly, the small Dutch inn where Rip and his male friends used to deliberate peacefully, if belatedly upon public events has been replaced by the Union Hotel, owned by the aptly named Jonathan Doolittle. Where the former was a convivial and social space of "accustomed phlegm and drowsy tranquility" presided over by a portrait of King George III, the latter has a "busy, bustling, disputatious tone about it," and operates under the auspices of a different portrait: King George's "red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large characters: GENERAL WASHINGTON" (10).

Part of the popularity of this simple tale--and one of the reasons for its canonical status--results from the ways in which it foregrounds the dialectic of revolutionary change and historical continuity in the context of postrevolutionary US nationalism. The joke of "Rip Van Winkle" is that this dialectic works in reverse of what readers taught to focus on dates like 1776 and 1787 have come to expect. Viewed from the perspective of a man like Rip, a "poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the King," the political changes marked by those dates are largely insignificant (11). General Washington looks a lot like King George, and democratic citizenship feels a lot like monarchical subjection. Rip's generic experience, in other words, allows Irving to shift his readers' attention from politics in the narrow sense of the word (which party Rip votes for on election day) to the political order in the broad sense. And on this latter plane, subtle changes have occurred. Having familiarized himself with the "Babylonish" political jargon of the 1790s, Rip returns to the Union Hotel, where, as at the "village inn" of the 1770s, he and his cronies tell tales of a colonial America from which such divisiveness was absent (10). The difference is that Rip is now an elderly widower liberated from the economic and conjugal "despotism" of Dame Van Winkle's "petticoat government" (14). Irving's point is that this form of liberation is not a political event, strictly speaking. Change has occurred in Rip's world, but it has followed the pace of a...