The Otherness of the Dutch Ethnic through Fashion in Washington Irving’s Works

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-140-1_17How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Fashion; the Other; Identification; Differentiation; History

Abstract

The perception and evaluation of fashion originating from a certain ethnic or cultural group may appear peculiar and comical when observed and assessed by others from different cultural backgrounds. In the realm of classical literature, this phenomenon typically manifests itself through depictions that reflect the cultural perspective of the author, despite the utilization of a narrator within their literary composition. The objective of this study is to elucidate the categorization of Dutch New York’s ethnic fashion in literature as the “other.” The literary compositions authored by Washington Irving, an early American writer, revolve around the theme of Dutch New York. Through the medium of novels and short stories, Irving skillfully incorporates humorous observations from the narrator, which subtly suggest that individuals belonging to different ethnic backgrounds, such as the Dutch, are perceived as distinct due to their contrasting appearance. The present paper employs the theoretical framework proposed by Michael Ryan et al. to elucidate the process of targeting a certain ethnic group using the concepts of identification and differentiation. The process of identification and differentiation is evident in the work through the use of representation. The approach of dismantling texts that align literary works with what happened in society and history that establish connections between literary works and historical events demonstrates that the creator of classical literature, whether consciously or unconsciously, portrays ethnicity as the “other” through their descriptions.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Magdalena Baga
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/11/07
TI  - The Otherness of the Dutch Ethnic through Fashion in Washington Irving’s Works
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language, Linguistics, and Literature (COLALITE 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 153
EP  - 167
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-140-1_17
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-140-1_17
ID  - Baga2023
ER  -