In this Book
- Washington Irving: An American Study, 1802-1832
- 1965
- Book
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

summary
Despite his prolificacy, Washington Irving remained an underexamined figure among literary scholars at the time William L. Hedges published his definitive study of the author in 1965. Most contemporary scholars believed that Irving's central contribution to the American literary tradition was that his work was "polished" and "suave." These scholars maintained that Irving's aristocratic sensibilities defined the stylistic choices of his literary works. To assume this, Hedges contends, is to "both let the man and the work slip beyond one's grasp." Hedges demonstrates that much of Irving's work can be understood in the context of his conflict between federalist and conservative politics. Irving, in other words, found himself incapable of committing to a coherent set of beliefs or attitudes, and this cultural uneasiness manifested itself in his early work. Hedges's book tries to correct some of the misapprehension about Irving's place in nineteenth-century American literature.
Table of Contents


- Half Title
- p. i
- Title Page
- p. iii
- Dedication
- p. v
- Abbreviations
- p. xiv
- Introduction
- pp. 1-16
- I. The Provincial Quest for Style
- pp. 17-43
- II. Logocracy in America
- pp. 44-64
- III. The Fiction of History
- pp. 65-85
- V. The Romantic Transition
- pp. 107-127
- VI. The Alienated Observer
- pp. 128-163
- VIII. The Way the Story Is Told
- pp. 191-235
- IX. The Unreal World of Washington Irving
- pp. 236-267
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421435862
Related ISBN
9781421435855
MARC Record
OCLC
1127293528
Launched on MUSE
2019-11-17
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Funder
Mellon/NEH / Hopkins Open Publishing: Encore Editions
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND