Essay The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow By Washington Irving. Investigating The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving was the first writer of the nineteenth century to achieve an international literary reputation. According to his brief biography in our required text, he was born in New York City in 1783.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow begins in 1790 in a small town named Sleepy Hollow, near modern-day Tarrytown. The town is believed to be haunted, owing to a witch’s curse in the early days of the Dutch Settlement, or potentially the sorcery of an old Native American chief, depending on who you ask. The most feared spirit in the town is the.
Setting: “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” takes place in the Hudson River Valley of New York, specifically in the vicinity of Tarrytown, at the turn of the 19th century. The village of Sleepy Hollow itself is described as lying north of Tarrytown. In reality, the exact nature and location of Sleepy Hollow is disputed.
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. The story opens with a note that it has been found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, the story’s narrator. Irving uses this framing device—in which he is just presenting a narrative.