(Washington) Irving was only the first of the writers of the American ghostly tale to recognize that the supernatural, exactly because its epistemological status is so difficult to determine, challenged the writer to invent a commensurately sophisticated narrative technique.

Howard Kerr
About This Quote

In his essay on Irving, Hawthorne is making the case that Irving’s stories of mythical beings and legendary figures draw upon a wide range of literary influences, from Homer to Shakespeare to the Gothic. In particular, he notes that Irving’s work draws upon a wider variety of sources than most other types of American fiction of the period, including “the romantic Gothic tale, the classical myth, the spiritistic tale or ghost story, and the historical romance or historical novel.”

Source: The Haunted Dusk

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