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Why does Irving frame the story of Rip Van Winkle and how does it require suspension of disbelief?

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Washington Irving frames "Rip Van Winkle" as a story found among the papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker, an amateur historian, to create a sense of authenticity and verisimilitude. This framing device encourages readers to suspend disbelief by presenting the fantastical tale as a mysterious historical event. The need for suspension of disbelief arises from the fantastical premise of Rip sleeping for 20 years, which is crucial for the story's message about change and continuity.

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The device of framing the story of "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving and the fact that we have to suspend our disbelief as we read it both stem from the fact that it is a fantasy or tall tale with a wild premise that has no basis in reality. It tells of a man who walks up into the Catskill Mountains before the American Revolutionary War, meets a group of strange men playing nine-pins-- a type of bowling-- falls asleep, and then wakes up over twenty years later after America has won its independence from England.

A framing device creates an embedded narrative, or a story within another story, for a variety of reasons in literature. In the case of "Rip Van Winkle," it is used to establish verisimilitude, or the appearance of reality. Obviously no one is going to believe that a person would fall asleep...

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for over twenty years and then wake up alive and well, so Irving uses the framing to suggest that his fantasy may have been one of those mysterious unexplainable occurrences that could have actually taken place in the past. Near the end of the story in a note that comprises part of the frame, the historian Dietrich Knickerbocker writes:

The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvelous events and appearances.

This ties in with the second part of the question. "Willing suspension of disbelief" is a term first used by the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his memoir Biographia Literaria. Coleridge argues that writers can create the semblance of truth in literature of the imagination, causing readers to temporarily put aside critical thinking so that they can better appreciate the writer's illusions. The framing device in "Rip Van Winkle" helps readers temporarily suspend their disbelief by creating the illusion of reality.

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Irving frames the story as one found among the papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker, an amateur historian of Dutch history in the area. Knickerbocker did most of his research through oral history, we are told, as books of Dutch history in the Americas were "scanty." While telling us in a straight-faced, deadpan way that the book is "of unquestionable authority," the narrator immediately goes on to undermine his author by saying some thought Knickerbocker should have devoted himself to "weightier" matters and that his "errors and follies" are remembered sorrowfully rather than angrily. In other words, we are set up for a tale that may or may not be true. Irving does this both to poke fun at fantastic "tall tale" histories that were published as "history," but also to raise the possibility that this bit of folklore might have some basis in fact.

The place we need to suspend disbelief occurs when Rip stumbles onto the strange, apparently enchanted and ghostly people in the mountains dressed in old fashioned Dutch clothing of a century earlier who give him the beer that allows him to sleep for twenty years.

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"Rip Van Winkle" is a frame narrative because the narrator is on objective third person who tells the reader the story  ‘‘was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker" who was known to have spent most of his life researching Dutch history. This adds a certain feeling of authenticty to the story.  Instead of just saying "Hey, I heard this story" Irving's narrator adds credibilty to the story's origin.

As the reader we must suspend disblief when we realize Rip Van Winkle has slept for 20 years.  Obviously this could not happen, but it's important for the message of the story to have him sleep this long while the world around him changes.

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