“The Citadel Within”: Washington Irving and the Search for Literary Vocation

From his own time to the present, Washington Irving has seemed to many observers to embody the ambiguities of the American aesthetic response to Europe. The critical success of The Sketch Book, published in 1819–20, offered the first important reversal to the one-way flow of culture across the Atlantic. Through the persona of Geoffrey Crayon, genteel, literate observer of Old World customs, Irving offered a convincing argument that an American could be a man of letters, that a “demi-savage” from the New World wilderness could hold “a feather in his hand, instead of on his head.” Yet Irving's very success in conforming to European literary standards left him open to charges of imitativeness and overrefinement; critics complained that his work was too Anglicized and prettified, that he sold his native birthright for the pottage of international acclaim. More recent commentators have attempted to rescue Crayon for American literature, stressing Irving's humor, his incorporation of native materials, and his ties to the landscape. Both sides of the argument, however, tend to focus on Irving as he presented himself at the end of his career, after a quarter-century of elaboration on Geoffrey Crayon. By the time Irving published the Author's Revised Version of his works in 1848, a shelf full of books affirmed his identity as the gentle wanderer, graceful observer, resident of the Alhambra, and spectator at Bracebridge Hall.