WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859)

WORKS: The Alhambra 1832: Spanish Romance and Legend of Don Munio
Sancho de Hinojosa.
GENRE: Fiction narrative, short story.
PERIOD: Transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. He shows elements of the
two movements.
INFLUENCES: the European Romantics, Sir Walter Scott, Calderón de La Barca,
Lope de Vega and books on Spanish history.
THEMES: Love and death; the marvellous (Magic spells, incantations, charms,
talking animals), weird phenomena); Romantic view of the past (old times were
better).
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS: Irving was the Father of American Fiction.
Sketches, poems, plays, essays. Studied law. First professional American writer of
international re-known.
PURPOSE: entertaining with traces of didactic purpose.
AUDIENCE: American public.
STYLE: Lofty diction, related with war and chivalry.
CHARACTERIZATION: Stereotyped and romanticized characters.
NARRATIVE MODES: description of people, places and objects; report (the hunt,
the fight and the pilgrimage).
RHETORICAL DEVICES: The frame story. The author avoids responsibility for
delivering the narrative by using an intermediary.

He is the first American literary artist to earn his living through his writings and the
father of the American fiction, because he was the first to create masterpieces
in a narrative genre which is very prominent in the canon of American literature:
the short story. He wrote famous short stories as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow”.
His father was a strict Scottish Presbyterian (wealthy merchant) and his mother
was an English Episcopalian. Travels would constitute an essential stimulus to his
cosmopolitan imagination throughout his existence.
His first book was A History of New York (1908), whose authorship he ascribed to
a curious old historian called Diedrich Knickerbocker. This book was a parody of
KA Picture of New York, a guidebook which had just appeared.
Irving moved to London intending to earn his living by his pen only. He was
encouraged personally to do so by Sir Walter Scott, and partly through Scott’s
influence, he was attracted to romanticism. Irving’s work displays the transition
from neoclassicism to romanticism and combines elements from both
movements.
He displayed a very careful control of technical skill. Among other residual
features of the 18th Century culture to be found in Irving’s work is his lack of
concern about individuality and originality. Sentimentalism prevails over
rationalism, and moral exhortation tends to give way to a purely aesthetic
appreciation, though didactic purpose is not completely absent. In order to
arouse intense and uncommon emotions, the artist’s imagination dwells in
remote settings, far away in time and space, often even escaping from its
material environment into a world of fantasy. In that way Irving shares with most
European romantics their enthusiasm for exotic landscapes and their keen
interest in the past, particularly their predilection for the medieval era. Adapting
German folk and recasting legends became one of the most important trends
of his literary pursuit: The Sketch Book (1819-20), Bracebridge Hall (1822) and Tales
of the Traveller (1824).
When he returned to New York he wrote The Western Journals (1944) so as to
renew his acquaintance with his homeland. He also wrote Life of Washington
(1855-59), a monumental biography of the General after whom he had been
named.
After returning to America, Irving read Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega and
books on Spanish history, and he had a great interest in the history of Columbus.
He wrote many books about him. In Seville he met Cecilia Böhl von
Faber (Fernán Caballero), who enjoyed telling him folk tales and anecdotes
about the Spanish peasantry. In his stay in the Alhambra he took notes of stories
and legends from both oral and written sources. In 1832 he published The
Alhambra in two volumes. While love and death are the predominant themes of
the book, it relies almost exclusively on the marvellous, primarily through the use
of magic spells, incantations, charms, talking animals and other weird
phenomena. He wanted illusion and mystery to be easily seen through, not to
mix them up with the factual realities of the present. For this, Irving resorted to the
well-known method of telling a story by presenting it as second-hand. One of his
favourite narrative devices was to introduce an intermediary who allowed the
real author to justify and distance himself from the tale by presenting himself as
a mere editor of an old manuscript or some enigmatic papers found by
accident.
To a certain extent, the use of a fictitious intermediary narrator is linked to the
practice of publishing anonymously or under a pseudonym, but as a narrative
technique it involves the creation of a frame story, in which the author becomes
a mediator between the original storyteller and the reader. The artist feels free to
adapt legends while dispensing with historical accuracy, and to turn into serious
literature his skilfully crafted elaborations of folklore materials.

From The Alhambra (1832)

- “Spanish Romance” (it is an introductory prose piece which illustrates Irving's
perception of the Spanish culture).
- “Legend of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa” (extract exam sample 4)
-He was the first to create short story masterpieces.
-Transition from neoclassicism to romanticism, combining elements from both
movements.
-Classicist concern with technical skill and traditional themes to produce
balanced artificial patterns, contrasts with romantic focus with spontaneity,
individuality and originality. Romantic sensationalism (intense and uncommon
emotions, fantastic setting or magic) prevails over rationalism, and moral
exhortation gives way to a purely aesthetic appreciation, though didactic
purpose is not completely absent; besides, his enthusiasm for foreign landscapes
and interest in the past, the medieval era in particular.
He followed Sir Walter Scott’s attention to the German folk and fairy tales of
bewitchment. His visit and stay in Spain will also be reflected in his collection of
short stories The Alhambra: A Series of Tales and Sketches of the Moors and
Spaniards”. Feeling uneasy about blending fact and fiction, Irving resorted to the
method of telling a story by presenting it as second-hand (as a legend, or folk-
tale), presenting himself as an intermediary (i.e. editor or finder of lost papers), to
avoid responsibility when describing mysteries, illusions, or supernatural events.
Using a fictitious intermediary narrator, as well as publishing anonymously or
under a pseudonym involves creating a frame story in which the writer feels free
to adapt any legend while dispensing historical accuracy.
Irving’s attraction for Spanish legends was largely due to their high ‘oriental’
flavour, absent from other European cultures, and also by its code of honour, its
chivalric tradition, courtesy, romantic generosity, high disinterestedness, high-
minded, proud-spirited, disdainful of material gains, generous, although poor not
vulgar.
“Legend of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa” also entails a captivity narrative
(Some Moors made captive by some Christians). However captives are not
insulted or dishonoured, but become guests of honour; when the king is to be
made captive, he escapes. Furthermore, when the Christian knight died in battle,
the freed spirits magically or miraculously ‘escape’ on a pilgrimage to the Holy
Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
Using stereotypical characters –representing certain virtuous or vices, rather than
individuals- Irving tries to recapture ancient virtuous modes of behaviour in clear
contrast with American contemporary ones. In addition, comment is the
narrative mode that dominates the story, where the fictive narrator keeps
praising the virtuous of past actions and behaviour between two distinct,
sometimes hostile, communities, and present situation, mostly concerned with
material gains. The Spanish legend is used as an excuse to expose the writer’s
preferences. Besides, he appeals to the reader’s emotional response(s) to
persuade them of his ‘correct’ analysis and values: Chivalric, courteous,
generous behaviour. In clear contrast between real and fictive accounts of war
fares between European colonists and the Indians, for example, or between the
British and the Americans, Irving’s legend presents an ideal as well as magic
portrait of past war events as possible models to be imitated. Furthermore, he
made his narrator reliable when he supported his story with historical texts.
Irving shares with most European romantics their enthusiasm for exotic
landscapes and their keen interest in the medieval era. Often escaping from
material environment into a world of fantasy.
In order to entertain his expanding public, he combined, in a prose style, fact
and fiction. He used an ornamental style to create a particular ATMOSPHERE,
diction (choice of vocabulary and arrangement of words), pace and imagery.
He used the four narratives modes: kinds of utterance through which a narrative
is conveyed. The four narrative modes can reveal character.
His narrative technique involves the creation of a frame story (story within a story),
in which the author becomes a mediator between the original storyteller and the
reader, by the use of this strategy, the artist feels free to adapt legends while
dispensing with historical accuracy.
His narrative voice conveys a powerful self-assurance.

WASHINGTON IRVING’S CONCEPT OF “SPANISH ROMANCE”: Washington Irving

was attracted to Romanticism under the influence of Sir Walter Scott. He shares
with romantic writers their enthusiasm for exotic landscapes and their keen
interest in the past, particularly for the medieval era. So, it can be said that the
main purpose of Irving was to arouse intense and uncommon emotions,
throughout remote settings, far away in time (medieval era) and space, the
creation of a world of fantasy.
“Legend of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa” represents perfectly his idea of
Romanticism. The main plot of the work i s the conflict between Christians and
Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula from 8th to the 15th century, which means that it
is a supposed recreation of the past, especially of the medieval period.
Furthermore, although the work was written in Spain itself, the place is not
considered the same because it was the Spain of the medieval times. Moreover,
in the plot fact and fiction are merged and the presentation of the fact is
idealized in order to create a fantasy world.
The introductory remarks to the “Legend of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa” are
written in an ingratiating prose style. This kind of writing might have been
prompted by the author’s opposition to “the degeneracy of the present times”
which he had already denounced at the age of nineteen. The kind of audience
this work is addressed to is the general audience from the future. This means the
time Irving was writing this work, he was not thinking about the audience of that
time, but of the future time. The evidence for this statement is not based only on
his own statement “the degeneracy of the present times,” but also on his
response to the critics of his time with the one “If my writings are worth anything,
they will outlive temporary criticism; if not, they are not worth caring about.”
When he said these words he wanted future readers to be amazed of his work.
For this reason, he is so keen on fantasy and medieval times because these works
will be always exotic for any kind of readers, no matter the time and the location.
Regarding the ingratiating remarks, they may sound artificial nowadays and
make the narrative somewhat old-fashioned.
PLOT AND SETTING OF THE “LEGEND OF DON MUNIO SANCHO DE HINOJOSA:” The
plot and the setting of the “Legend of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa” can be
divided into two parts according to the chronology.
The first part takes place in Castile during the medieval period. Don Munio
Sancho de Hinojosa is presented as a noble knight who fights to defend Castile
against the Moors Conquest of Spain. In this part, Abadil, a powerful Moor, asks
for a kind of truce to marry a lady peacefully. Because of the fact that Don Munio
was a gentleman, he offers his own castle to celebrate the wedding for fifteen
days.
The second part of the story takes place several years after the first part and in
Salmanara Don Munio and his nobles were called by the King of Castile in order
to fight against the Moors. Although Doña María, the wife of Don Munio, does
not want his husband to go into the battle, he decides to do it, because he needs
to defend his and Castile’s honours, thinking according to the medieval knight
code of honour. In the battle, Abidail, unaware of the fact that the knight who is
fighting against is Don Munio, kills him.
After this event, Don Munio is buried in the convent of San Domingo, and soon
after this, Doña María joined him.
Furthermore, the same day when the battle takes place and Don Munio and
some knights passed away, in the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, their spirits
appeared to fulfil their vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre.
CHARACTERIZATION OF DON MUNIO AND HIS WIFE: it is important to note author’s
tendency to rely on stereotype characters. A stereotype is a generalized,
oversimplified character, whose thoughts and actions are excessively
predictable because they have become conventional.
Don Munio represents the prototype of the ideal medieval knight who fights to
defend not only his honour, but also Castile’s and his king’s. Doña María is the
prototype medieval lady, who both supports his husband to go into battle and is
also afraid of him dying, like it happened in this story.
We note that physical descriptions are not provided in the story. Irving prefers
focusing on their actions, thoughts, and emotions, which really defined how they
are, and most importantly, how they are perceived: Don Munio as a strong,
brave and honourable knight who needs to do constantly exploits and save and
protect people, and Doña María as fragile, faithful and loyal, who needs
constantly saving. Moreover, in their relationship, we can see the dependency
of Doña María, who represents women, to Don Munio, who represents men.
When Don Munio passed away, Doña María is not able to survive without him;
she passed away soon after, showing that a lady will not able to live without his
knight.
We can conclude that Don Munio and Doña María do not represent real people,
but idealized characters in an idealized world.
USE OF THE FRAME STORY: the frame is located at the end of the introduction
entitled “Spanish Romance” and at the end of the story itself. The frame story as
a narrative technique was innovative in
Irving’s times. This technique implies that the author becomes a mediator
between the original storyteller, Fray Prudencio de Sandoval in this case, and the
reader. With this technique, the author not only gains distance and avoids
responsibility of the facts presented, but also he feels free to adapt legends while
dispensing with historical accuracy, and to turn into serious literature his
Skilfully crafted elaborations of folklore materials.
USE OF THE FOUR NARRATIVE MODES (DESCRIPTION, REPORT, COMMENT AND
SPEECH): All the four narratives are found in the text:
 Description (of people, objects, or geographical settings): for example of
characters such as Don Munio, Doña María, Abadil and his fiancée, and
places such as the convent of San Domingo.
 Report (of actions): the battle between Moors and Christians, the death
and the funeral of Don Munio and the apparition of Don Munio and other
knights in Jerusalem.
 Speech (either direct or reported): the dialogue between Don Munio and
Abadil in the first part of the text, the dialogue between Doña María and
Don Munio, between Don Munio and his knights, the grief of Abadil when
he realizes he has just slain Don Munio, and the dialogue between Doña
María and his steward.
 Comment (e.g. moralizing disquisition or digression): this narrative mode is
incrusted in the depiction of Don Munio, Doña María and Abadil and
especially at the end of the excerpt, when Don Munio and his knights
arrived in Jerusalem as good Christians.
All the narrative modes are important, but the report and description are the
most used ones, as they contribute to the development of the action and the
creation of the atmosphere, which is the most important features of the work,
rather than the interaction among the characters.
Sometimes, when trying to appeal to the emotions, Irving slipped into the
sentimental. Sentimentality is an excessive reliance on emotional effect, or
pathos so great to strain the reader’s willingness to believe. Pathos is the quality
in a work of art which evokes deep feelings of tenderness, pity, or sorrow. The
description of the characters is quite idealized. This means that if at some time
these people were real, probably they were not as they are described in the
excerpt. In order to create that idealization, Irving needs to sentimentalize the
descriptions. For example, when Don Munio is called to go into battle, Doña
Maria suffers a lot because she is afraid of him dying and when Don Munio is slain
by Abadil, the latter is feeling terribly grief. And as it has been commented in a
previous question, after Don Munio’s death, Doña María does not live much
longer; we can say she dies of sorrow. So, this last example is the one which shows
better the excessive reliance on emotional effect.
Critics have often referred to Irving’s feelings of nostalgia for an idealized past.
The setting of almost of his stories is past time, especially the medieval period,
because in this setting he can create an idealized and a fantasy world to all his
adventures and stories. Furthermore, the romance was born and achieved its
greatest splendour in the medieval period when the chivalry honour code used
to dominate people’s lives and any lady’s honour could be sullied. Irving created
a world where fact and fiction merged and the reader does not know what is
true and false.
In 1857 Irving wrote to Samuel Austin Allibone about The Alhambra: “Everything
in the work relating to myself and to the actual inhabitants of the Alhambra is
unexaggerated fact: it was only in the legends that I indulged in romancing; and
these were founded on materials picked up about the place.” romance was a
literary genre born and developed in the medieval period, when the chivalry
honour code used to rule people’s lives, when ladies used to be saved by knights,
and these latter preferred to give their own life as defending his honour and his
realm than to live breaking this honour. In “Legend of Don Munio Sancho de
Hinojosa” all of these features can be found: Don Munio is a gentle and faithful
knight who gives his life defending Castile, Doña María and Abadil’s fiancée are
completely depended on their men and finally the excerpt finished with the
apparition of Don Munio and his knights in Jerusalem in order to fulfil their vow of
pilgrimage according to the Castile’s faith, which idealizes more the characters.
STYLE: style refers to the habitual manner of expression of an author, and includes
among other elements: diction (choice of vocabulary and arrangement of
words), imagery (the use of a consistent pattern of related images), and pace
(the rate at which an action progresses, by compressing or expanding the
narration). The concept of atmosphere refers to the intangible equality evoked
by a work of art through its appeals to both extra-sensory and sensory
perception. The Puritan plain style is quite simple and direct, because it is used in
order to give a straight message, which can be understood by as many people
as possible. We need to take into consideration that the purpose of works written
in Puritan plain style is to transmit an important and moral message. The Puritan
plain style is quite simple and direct, because it is used in order to give a straight
message, which can be understood by as many people as possible. We need to
take into consideration that the purpose of works written in Puritan plain style is
to transmit an important moral message.
On the other hand, Irving’s style is not plain, but ornate and artificial because his
purpose was to write a romance. For that purpose, he needed to create a
fantasy world, far away and unreachable to the reader.
DICTION: we find words about war, court, chivalry, emotions, feelings and
character. The imagery evokes an idealized and a fantasy place in Castile, the
toughness of the battlefield, the sorrow of the death and the unbelievable
apparition in Jerusalem. The pace is quite slow because there are a lot of
descriptions which fits very well with the romance because of the fact that in that
reality, etiquette and honour codes used to be followed constantly.
REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENCE: IF we take a look on this excerpt and we read
again the part when the battle takes place, we can see that there is no explicit
violence; this means we do not actually read how Don Munio was killed, the only
thing we read is that he had a wound in his arm, and because of this, he was not
able to fight properly and died in hands of Abadil. Furthermore, the violence in
this text is linked to the war, the only place where Moors and Christians fight. Out
of war, both sides used to get along well or, at
least, they used to respect each other so much that Don Munio offered his own
castle to celebrate Abadil’s wedding. Moreover, the war and the violence are
only presented in relation to the defence of the realm of Castile’s honour; and if
someone died fighting in the war, he was considered that he was doing his duty.
So, it can be said that Irving idealizes the concept of war.
The “Legend of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa” does not end in a happy -ever-
after manner. The excerpt ends with the death of Don Munio and some of his
retinue and their apparition in Jerusalem to fulfil their vow of pilgrimage. If the
reader does not know anything about romances the effect is surprising, because
he/she expected a happy-ever-after ending. In this sense, some readers may
think that Irving was playing with their expectations. Furthermore, in the
beginning of the story there are no clues about the ending, especially when the
reader sees the hospitality of Don Munio for offering his own castle to celebrate
Abadil’s wedding. However, if you know that the excerpt is a romance, or in our
case students of English Studies, the ending is not surprising because romances
are usually ended with the death of the main character, which usually coincides
with the leader knight, in a battle or war defending his realm or lady’s honour.
In his youth, Washington Irving wrote witty parody and bold satire, and often
displayed a rather irreverent kind of burlesque humour with which the author
often amused his audience. Later on, he developed a gentler and more subtle
humour, of which we find an instance in his description of the Spaniards of his
time, compared and contrasted with other contemporary Europeans. At the end
of “Spanish Romance”, Irving concludes that “the Spaniards are the most high-
minded and proud-spirited people of Europe” (lines 47-48) not because the
strength of the Spanish “race” but because of the influence of the Moslems, who
throughout the evasion of Spain, a higher civilization and a nobler style of thinking
was brought into Gothic Spain. So, Spain with the Moslems would not be as a
good country as it is. On the contrary, in “Legend of Don Munio
Sancho de Hinojosa” the main character was a Christian knight who defends
Castile from the Moor invasion. That is the reason why in this excerpt, Christians
are described as the “good” ones and Moors as the “bad” ones, in order the
reader to defend Don Munio’s side
In Irving’s time, many works of fiction were presented to readers as if they were
truthful narratives told by alleged reliable narrators. Irving often reserved the
procedure, and turned history into fiction. Irving creates such a story whose
setting (time and place) are completely real. In other words, there are evidences
of the existence of the medieval period and the Arabic conquest of Spain and
the consecutive reconquest. So, there were different kind of relationships
between Muslims and Christians. In this setting, a story would take place but with
a more realistic touch. In order to make his excerpt more trustworthy, Irving
creates a reliable narrator, Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, who has written the
“History of King Don Alonzo VI,”, in which the legend of Don Munio can be found.
The main difference between Irving and other authors is that the latter use
historical materials to present the side of the history they are defending. However,
Irving uses historical materials so that he can create fantasy stories and legends
in far -away time and space. For him, history is just an excuse to imagine a world
where knights save ladies, and the latter died for their men.
18th rationalism is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or
justification and 19th materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter or
energy; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including
consciousness) are the result of material interactions. So, Irving’s romanticism as
nothing in common with both of these approaches. Irving was interested in
idealized worlds, fantasy, and creation that nobody could ever distinguish one
fact from fiction. Irving was so successful because he was going against the
current and giving different stories to the public. People who used to read Irving’s
works were probably bored of reading rationalist and materialist works. They
wanted something different, and Irving could provide it.
MAIN IDEAS:
 The author read and thought about Spain’s Muslim past when he was in
Granada.
 According to the author, in the 19th century Spain was different from all
the other European countries.
 The author’s remarks about the Arabs show that he respected them.
 To the author, the Spanish character owes much to the chivalric virtues
of the period of the Arabic occupation.
 The author regards the relationship between Christians and Muslims as
competitive.
 The knight’s tom is a mystery for most people, but an expert could make
sense of it.
 Don Munio was daring and Doña María was anxious.
 On seeing the Moorish cavalcade, Don Munio was delighted because
he could obtain some valuables to take home.
 The young Moorish cavalier’s behaviour during his capture was calm
.Don Munio’s actions showed that he thought that a noble knight should
treat his enemies with chivalry.
 When Don Munio decided to answer the king of Castile’s call, Doña
María thought that Don Munio fought too much, and it was time he
gave it up.
 In order to rally his cavaliers to the king’s rescue, Don Munio argued that
if they died in the battle against the Moors, they would go to heaven.
 The most important aspect of Doña Maria’s reaction when the
watchman first told her about her husband’s procession is that she
thought that he was alive, when in fact he was already dead.
 Abadil felt remorse about Don Munio’s death.
 The main idea behind the story of the appearance of Don Munio at the
Holy Sepulchre is that chivalric faith is stronger than death.