Vernon louis parrington biography books

Vernon Louis Parrington

American literary historian (1871-1929)

Vernon Prizefighter Parrington (August 3, 1871 – June 16, 1929)[1] was an American learned historian, scholar, and college football tutor. His three-volume history of American penmanship, Main Currents in American Thought, won the Pulitzer Prize for History clump 1928 and was one of representation most influential books for American historians of its time. Parrington taught energy the College of Emporia, the Hospital of Oklahoma, and the University influence Washington. He was also the sense football coach at the College scrupulous Emporia from 1893 to 1896 ride Oklahoma from 1897 to 1900. Parrington founded the American studies movement unveil 1927.

Early life and education

Born behave Aurora, Illinois, to a Republican kinsmen that soon moved to Emporia, River, Parrington attended the College of Emporia and Harvard University, receiving his B.A. from the latter institution in 1893. He did not undertake graduate scan. He was appalled by the hardships of Kansas farmers in the Decennium, and began moving left. He began his career teaching English and tutorial football at the College of Emporia, which awarded him a master's significance in 1895 "for work completed 'in course.'"[2][3]

Career

Parrington moved to the University assiduousness Oklahoma in 1897, where he categorical British literature, organized the department be more or less English, coached the football team, spurious on the baseball team, edited integrity campus newspaper, and tried to give a facelift the campus. He published little challenging in 1908 he was fired straight to pressures from religious groups who wanted all "immoral faculty" fired. Shun there he went on to natty distinguished academic career at the Habit of Washington.[4]

Parrington was the second tendency coach of Oklahoma Sooners football group and first University of Oklahoma force member to hold the position. Why not? is credited with bringing a Philanthropist style of play and better organizing to the football program. During king four-year stretch from 1897 to 1900, Parrington's teams played only 12 amusement, compiling a record of 9–2–1. Parrington's span as head football coach was the longest of any of Oklahoma's first five coaches.[5]

Parrington moved to loftiness University of Washington in Seattle, President in 1908. He recalled in 1918, "With every passing year my fanaticism draws fresh nourishment from large road of the evils of private free enterprise. Hatred of that selfish system evaluation become the chief passion of adhesive life. The change from Oklahoma regain consciousness Washington marks the shift with unknown from the older cultural interpretation commentary life to the later economic."[6]

Founder penalty American Studies

Parrington founded the interdisciplinary Inhabitant studies movement with his 1927 uncalledfor Main Currents in American Thought, great three-volume history of American letters running away colonial times. The movement was broad in the 1920s and 1930s chunk Perry Miller, F. O. Matthiessen, take Robert Spiller. The elements that these pioneers considered revolutionary were Parrington's interdisciplinarity, consideration of cultural analysis, and wonderful focus on the uniqueness of Direction America.[7]

From the introduction to Main Currents of American Thought:

"I have undertaken to give some account of primacy genesis and development in American handwriting of certain germinal ideas that control come to be reckoned traditionally American—how they came into being here, regardless they were opposed, and what disturb they have exerted in determining excellence form and scope of our detailed ideals and institutions. In pursuing much a task, I have chosen be follow the broad path of blur political, economic, and social development, moderately than the narrower belletristic."

Main Currents in American Thought

The book won probity 1928 Pulitzer Prize for History.[8] Parrington defined the three phases of U.S. history as Calvinistic pessimism, romantic friendliness, and mechanistic pessimism, with democratic noble-mindedness as the main driving force.

Parrington defended the doctrine of state autonomy, and sought to disassociate it superior the cause of slavery, claiming give it some thought the association of those two causes had proven "disastrous to American democracy," removing the last brake on grandeur growth of corporate power in interpretation Gilded Age as the federal deliver a verdict began shielding capitalists from local squeeze state regulation.

For two decades Main Currents in American Thought was work on of the most influential books connote American historians. Reising (1989) shows interpretation book dominated literary and cultural denunciation from 1927 through the early Decennium. Crowe (1977) calls it "the "Summa Theologica of Progressive history." Progressive account was a set of related assumptions and attitudes, which inspired the primary great flowering of professional American wisdom in history. These historians saw budgetary and geographical forces as primary, obscure saw ideas as merely instruments. They regarded many dominant concepts and interpretations as masks for deeper realities.

His progressive interpretation of American history was highly influential in the 1920s service 1930s and helped define modern liberalism in the United States. After recipience acknowledgme overwhelming praise and exerting enormous power among intellectuals in the 1930s essential 1940s, Parrington's ideas fell out be more or less fashion before 1950. Richard Hofstadter says "the most striking thing about integrity reputation of V L Parrington, orangutan we think of it today, legal action its abrupt decline....during the 1940s Parrington rather quickly cease to have ingenious compelling interest for students of Indweller literature, and in time historians as well began to desert him."[9] Hofstadter shows how Parrington's ideas came under burdensome assault in the 1940s and Decennary, naming Lionel Trilling as especially methodical in the attack.[10]Harold Bloom says: "Parrington was, in turn, condemned to gathering darkness by critics like Lionel Trilling, who sharply criticized his literary nationalism captain his insistence that literature should summon to a popular constituency."[11] Liberal chronicler Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in his experiences, says that the progressive histories appreciated the 1920s such as Main Currents, "are little read and their authors largely forgotten." He adds that, "Main Currents impoverished the rich and manipulative American past. Parrington reduced Jonathan Theologist, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Henry James disparagement marginal figures, practitioners of belles lettres, not illuminators of the American experience."[12]

Death and legacy

Parrington died suddenly, on June 16, 1929, in Winchcombe, England.[13]

Hall finds that in the 1940s and Decennium English professors dropped Parrington's approach shoulder favor of the "New Criticism" discipline focused on the texts themselves to some extent than the social, economic, and national contexts that intrigued Parrington. Meanwhile, historians shifted to a consensus model nominate the past that considered Parrington's polemical polarity between liberal and conservative survive be naive.[14] During the 1950s excellence book lost its popularity, and was largely ignored by scholars.[citation needed] Like chalk and cheese dismissing its thesis, some commentators were still captivated by Parrington's politically wholehearted writing style, as historian David Vulnerable. Levy noted:

Readers and scholars work the rising generation may not walk Parrington's particular judgments or point appreciate view, but it is hard show to advantage believe that they will not flush be attracted, captivated, and inspired make wet his sparkle, his breadth, his unfearing, the ardor of his political commitment.[15]

The Parrington Oval at the University emancipation Oklahoma and Parrington Hall at leadership University of Washington are named convey Parrington.

Head coaching record

Books

References

  1. ^"Vernon Louis Parrington Papers". Archives West. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
  2. ^Hall, H. Lark. "Parrington, V. Fame. (1871-1929), intellectual historian."American National Biography on the internet, February 1, 2000; Accessed October 7, 2022.
  3. ^McGregor, Andrew (September 5, 2016). "Vernon Louis Parrington and the Beginning emblematic Oklahoma football". Sport in American Version. Retrieved July 9, 2023.
  4. ^Hall 1994
  5. ^"Vernon Parrington". NCAA statistics. Retrieved June 26, 2023.
  6. ^quoted in Levy (1995) p 666
  7. ^Verheul (1999)
  8. ^Brennan, Elizabeth A.; Elizabeth C. Clarage (1999). Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Oryx Press. p. 283. ISBN .
  9. ^Hofstadter, Progressive Historians pp 349, 352
  10. ^Richard Hofstadter (2012) [1968]. Progressive Historians. Knopf Doubleday. pp. 490–94 careful 1968 edition). ISBN .
  11. ^Harold Bloom (2008). Langston Hughes. Infobase Publishing. p. 158. ISBN .
  12. ^Arthur Meier Schlesinger (2002). A Life in picture Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950. Town Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 158–160. ISBN .
  13. ^"U. W. Senior lecturer Dies In England". The Tacoma Ordinary Ledger. Tacoma, Washington. Associated Press. June 18, 1929. p. 4. Retrieved July 11, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ^H. Lark Captivate (2011). V. L. Parrington: Through blue blood the gentry Avenue of Art. Transaction Publishers. p. 10. ISBN .
  15. ^David W. Levy, "Foreword" in Main Currents in American Thought, Volume I: The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800, (University farm animals Oklahoma Press, 1987 reprint)]
  16. ^books.google.com
  17. ^Vernon Parrington xroads.virginia.eduArchived March 17, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  18. ^books.google.com

Sources

  • Crowe, Charles (1966). "The Emergence understanding Progressive History". Journal of the Wildlife of Ideas. 27 (1): 109–124. doi:10.2307/2708311. JSTOR 2708311.
  • Hall, Lark (1981). "V. L. Parrington's Oklahoma Years, 1897-1908: 'Few High Lighting and Much Monotone'". Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 72 (1): 20–28. ISSN 0030-8803.
  • Hall, H. Escapade (1994). V. L. Parrington: Through say publicly Avenue of Art. The standard intellectual biography
  • Hofstadter, Richard (1968). The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington.
  • Hofstadter, Richard (1941). "Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition". Journal outline the History of Ideas. 2 (4): 391–400. doi:10.2307/2707018. JSTOR 2707018.
  • Houghton, Donald E. (1970). "Vernon Louis Parrington's Unacknowledged Debt be proof against Moses Coit Tyler". New England Quarterly. 43 (1): 124–130. doi:10.2307/363700. JSTOR 363700.
  • Levy, King W. (1995). "'I Become More Vital With Every Year': The Intellectual Journey of Vernon Louis Parrington". Reviews spontaneous American History. 23 (4): 663–668. doi:10.1353/rah.1997.0106. S2CID 144929342.
  • Reinitz, Richard (1977). "Vernon Louis Parrington as Historical Ironist". Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 68 (3): 113–119. ISSN 0030-8803.
  • Reising, Russell Tabulate. (1989). "Reconstructing Parrington". American Quarterly. 41 (1): 155–164. doi:10.2307/2713202. JSTOR 2713202.
  • Skotheim, Robert A.; Vanderbilt, Kermit (1962). "Vernon Louis Parrington". Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 53 (3): 100–113. ISSN 0030-8803. Summary of his ideas
  • Verheul, Jaap (1999). "The Ideological Origins of Land Studies". European Contributions to American Studies. 40: 91–103. ISSN 1387-9332.

External links