C LIT 30B Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Secret Identity, Travel Literature, Phenotype
Document Summary
9:31 pm: rip van winkle - washington irvine 1819, rip van winkle syndrome. Secret identity of the private individual: rip van winkle is also the name of a story by washington irving, 1819. Whose central figure remained enigmatic enough to call the identificatory impulse of any supposed homecoming into question: the story of rip van winkle. A hero who returns home after a slumberous absence only to find out that this home has changed entirely. Presents us with a phenotypical travel narrative that has accumulated more significance over the course of its lifetime than its explicit textual adaptations suggest. The plot of this story is of a schematic simplicity reminiscent of the narrative form of a myth or a fable. It can be traced back to the american writer washington irving, who at the beginning of the nineteenth century wrote a story about the colonial past of the american east coast that evokes the land"s now doubly foreign.
