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With the reputation of “the birth of the American imagination” in American literary history, Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” has been a great source for not just the creation story of America but also the meaning of American identity and American literary genealogy. Irving’s magical story is about American Revolution and the future shock of American society after the Revolution. During Rip’s 20-year sleep, both the nation and American people experience tremendous changes, political, social, and economic. Such historical changes reflect the Zeitgeist of America - confusions, “anxieties” and uncertainties in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” grasps the very spirit of the time.
Irving through Rip’s character creates a prototype of “happy-go-lucky American” with a sound heart, despite his lack of responsibilities at home, his “insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour,” and his indifference to politics and history as a democratic citizen. This paper calls into question the various layers of Rip’s character as a newly born American, tracing the complex meanings of American identity of the time. It also attempts to examine the meaning of ‘American’ storytelling on human experience and history as well as on the post-Revolutionary America’s politics and society. This study inquires further into the relation between history and storytelling and the significance of storytelling, scrutinizing the relations between historical truth and its fictionality in the act of storytelling.

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