Washington Irving

Irving as Early Romanticist descriptions of Nature’s beauty his utilization of gothic imagery – Gothic literature--poetry, short stories, or novels designed to thrill readers by providing mystery, villainy, murder, and the supernatural belief that man was inherently good and would act nobly without incentive to do so

A Writer of Firsts first belletrist in American literature – belleslettres—”literature regarded as a fine art, esp. as having a purely aesthetic function”; Irving wrote for pleasure at a time when writing was pragmatic first American literary humorist first to write history and biography as entertainment introduced nonfiction prose as a literary genre

Hudson River School Themes in the art: – Discovery – Exploration – Settlement – Pastoral America

Thomas Cole—Landscape, 1825

John Frederick Kensett—Connecticut Shoreline in Autumn

Albert Bierstadt—Sierra Nevada Mountains

Asher Durand—Kindred Spirits

Rip van Winkle Themes Loss/discovery of identity challenge to American values and work ethic Anti-republicanism--George III vs. George Washington