The American Enlightenment as well as Romanticism plays an important role in Washington Irving's writings. Born in an era of rising nationalism after the American Revolution, Irving used his writings to provide a bridge between the Enlightenment and Romantic periods in America, and became known as one of the first most successful writers in American history.
             One of Irving's most famous works is The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in which he uses satire and visual imagery to "sketch" out American landscapes and cultures with the pseudonym of Geoffrey "Crayon" while imitating and incorporating elements of old world style. Irving paints (or sketches) a romantic painting by including a sense of imagination, boundlessness, and rational thinking-all ideas that were embraced during the Romantic period. The Enlightenment encouraged rationality, science, and central government, even more specifically, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Irving reflects all these ideas in his own style of sublimity, picturesqueness, beauty, and individualism.
             In Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, two of Irving's most infamous stories in The Sketch Book, he borrows the underlying storyline of old English legends and transform them into figures of American fiction. "...he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind of neighbor, and an obedient, henpecked husband." (39) Rip Van Winkle's attitude towards his wife, friends, and responsibilities emphasize the idealization of the common man in his writings. "...he declared it was no use to work on his farm; it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole country; everything about it went wrong, and would go wrong, in spite of him." (40) Rip symbolizes the lazy, laid-back, common man of the 1800s. Another story that stresses individualism is John Bull, which symbolizes Great B...