Washington Irving’s »iLegenid of Sleepy Hollow« might be considered as the most outstanding of the early short stories iin American literature. Especially as its text unfolds the growth of a new literary form and a gradual departure from novelistic techniques, o,r from an essayistic style, based on models from English -literature, which still prevail in the first part of Irving’s composition. After the long-winded mainly descriptive introductory part with many digressions written in long and complex sentences, the style and sentence structure change when, in the second part, the action begins to progress. In the central scene of that part, based -on the traceable motif from a German ballad, but set in America, the style is transformed into short, simple sentences following the balladic movement. In the Postscript, in a way of afterthought, Irving superadds a narrative frame, introducing the narrator who is supposed to have delivered his tale in oral transmission to a reactive and commenting audience. Thus, from that supplemental point of view, the precedent story reveals a wider range of meaning. By reshaping the originally »written« story into an »oral« one, a process comparable with that of the traditional novella, Irving has paved the way for the further development of the American short story.
