The sources of “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving and its influence on Max Frisch’s novel “Stiller”

Seminar paper from the year 1973 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Massachusetts - Amherst (English Department), course: English 750, Early American Literature, Professor Lowance, Fall Semester, 1973, language: English, abstract: Max Frisch novel "Stiller" was influenced by the American tale "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving. Irving himself was influenced by a German source. In this work, the author tries to untangle the interwoven works of Frisch and Irving. In the work the author singles out "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving and expound it in a new with the assistance of a reverberation which this tale has had in the writings of the modern Swiss German author Max Frisch. The author is convinced that to draw certain conclusions from the influence a given work of literature exerts on later works of literature is as legitimate in literary interpretation as to infer anything from the use to which an author puts his source material. The author also believes that Frisch's modern exploitation of the "Rip Van Winkle" story may shed as much new light on Irving's achievement as the comparison between "Rip Van Winkle" and its German source in the tale of "Peter Klaus, the Goatherd" has done.