How to give the reader a good time without being childish or banal

There are books that, without being childish or banal, seem designed to give the reader a good time. Sketchbook (of Sir Geoffrey Crayon)The collection of stories by the American diplomat and writer Washington Irving (1783-1859) is a prime example of this phenomenon. Published by Adesiara, the volume comprises a series of tales, including the famous "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," the legend of the horseman with no wings. This story, along with "Rip Van Winkle," exemplifies the cultural influence of the early Dutch—and Danish and German—colonists in the New York area. The stories gathered here are representative of early American Romanticism, which would later inspire widely known and translated authors, such as... Edgar Allan PoeBut it is also related to transcendentalism, the school of thought that links divinity with the course of nature and believes in an inherent goodness in humankind. While we cannot place Irving within a specific school of thought, nor include him in the group of Emerson or Thoreau, he was certainly part of the cultural environment in which this movement arose.

One striking feature of this volume is how the narrative voice—which is quite variable—repeatedly seeks the fabulous element that enriches what it describes, in "a strange mixture of discreet cunning and naive credulity." A fairly clear example of this is the Christmas stories, in which a traveler spends Christmas at the estate of an English aristocratic family. The characters include the pedantic, womanizing young student, the loudmouthed uncle who is the life of the party, and the grandfather who wants everything. as-it-was-before-that England would lose its characterThey could have been described with a certain sarcasm. Without exaggerating anything, the narrator could have mocked the pastiche that this family represents, but instead, he chooses to highlight their kind nature. The eccentricities become charming windows into the most genuine English character, and thus the patriarch, despite his pragmatic approach, closer to religious ritual than to metaphysical belief, is a small source of envy for the more credulous, "because a superstitious person, he thought, must live in a kind of world." This dualism is precisely characteristic of the circumstances in which the book was born and serves as a good example of it.

Dispersion and Unity

The apparent dispersion of the materials plays a role, transforming the collection of narratives into a book of sketches, yet maintaining a unified character with constant stylistic (false autofiction) and thematic (English traditions, Dutch cultural heritage, fantastical elements) features. This approach appears in other classic Romantic works, such as Opinions about the life of Murr the catETA Hoffmann's work also highlights how nature becomes not only a setting for the action but also a determining factor in the development of the story. This is the case with the Appalachian Mountains in "Rip Van Winkle," the dark and misty meanders of the Hudson in "Sleepy Hollow," and, of course, the countryside in "Rural Life in England." The interaction between individuals and nature is thus articulated in cultural and moral terms, as in the English countryside, where peasants and nobles form a single, coherent social body thanks to the close proximity with which they live the traditions they maintain. But the positive aspects of this relationship with nature are also shown in "Traits of the Indian Character," which explains the virtues of the Native Americans and the incomprehension and violence to which they were subjected.

All of this makes up a volume with which the author could be entirely satisfied, because it more than fulfills the purpose with which he closes "The Christmas Dinner": "If I can [...] undo a wrinkle of worry from the brow or free a saddened heart from a moment of sorrow; if I can [offer a benevolent view of human nature and make my reader feel better about others and about himself], I can say with certainty that I will not have written in vain."