Rip Van Winkle
by Washington Irving

Rip Van Winkle: Unreliable Narrator 1 key example

Unreliable Narrator
Explanation and Analysis—Bad Historian:

The frame story of the Sketchbook of Sir Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., the longer fictional work in which "Rip Van Winkle" appears, is that a man named Sir Geoffrey Crayon has traveled around the United States and England collecting stories from locals in different places. The opening of "Rip Van Winkle" introduces an additional frame story nested within Geoffrey Crayon's narration, that of an unreliable scholarly narrator:

The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious in the Dutch history of the province and the manners of the descendants from its primitive settlers[.]