Shattering the Fountain: Irving's Re-Vision of "Kubla Khan" in "Rip Van Winkle"

£6.99

Symbiosis 4.1 1-17
Author: Deanna C. Fernie
Pages: 18

'Shattering the Fountain: Irving’s Re-Vision of ‘Kubla Khan’ in ‘Rip Van Winkle’' by Deanna C. Fernie, offers an insightful analysis of the intertextual connections between Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem 'Kubla Khan' and Washington Irving’s story 'Rip Van Winkle.' Originally published in Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, this essay explores how Irving's tale transforms Coleridge’s poetic symbols of creation and imagination into a uniquely American myth. Fernie examines themes of artistic inspiration, memory, and national identity, providing a rich comparative study that bridges Romantic poetry and early American literature. This scholarly work is essential for those interested in literary criticism, transatlantic literary studies, and the evolution of American literary traditions.

Essay Excerpt

"In the idle moment when Rip Van Winkle loafs on a ‘green knoll’ before he is lured away by the mysterious stranger, he surveys the prospect below him from his Catskill perch. To one side, the Hudson River meanders on its course to the sea; to the other lies a cavernous and sunless valley: ‘a steep mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun’ (Irving 30). As Rip follows his guide up through the Catskill mountains, he finds himself ascending a steep gully that has run dry; evidently the fragments of rock in the valley were carried there by the water that once gushed from the mountains."