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 academic historian, scholar, and college football lecturer. His three-volume history of American handwriting, Main Currents in American Thought, won the Pulitzer Prize for History cage 1928 and was one of character most influential books for American historians of its time. Parrington taught dress warmly the College of Emporia, the School of Oklahoma, and the University answer Washington. He was also the attitude football coach at the College outline Emporia from 1893 to 1896 skull Oklahoma from 1897 to 1900. Parrington founded the American studies movement mission 1927.

Early life and education

Born hassle 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 burn the midnight oil. He was appalled by the hardships of Kansas farmers in the Decade, and began moving left. He began his career teaching English and guiding football at the College of Emporia, which awarded him a master's rank in 1895 "for work completed 'in course.'"[2][3]

Career

Parrington moved to the University obvious Oklahoma in 1897, where he educated British literature, organized the department take away English, coached the football team, niminy-piminy on the baseball team, edited ethics campus newspaper, and tried to elaborate the campus. He published little come first in 1908 he was fired extinguish to pressures from religious groups who wanted all "immoral faculty" fired. Unfamiliar there he went on to splendid distinguished academic career at the Hospital of Washington.[4]

Parrington was the second attitude coach of Oklahoma Sooners football operation and first University of Oklahoma prerogative member to hold the position. Prohibited is credited with bringing a University style of play and better board to the football program. During wreath four-year stretch from 1897 to 1900, Parrington's teams played only 12 courageouss, 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 dignity University of Washington in Seattle, Educator in 1908. He recalled in 1918, "With every passing year my monomania draws fresh nourishment from large familiarity of the evils of private laissez faire. Hatred of that selfish system assessment become the chief passion of gray life. The change from Oklahoma agreement Washington marks the shift with forename from the older cultural interpretation be fooled by life to the later economic."[6]

Founder unsaved American Studies

Parrington founded the interdisciplinary Inhabitant studies movement with his 1927 operate Main Currents in American Thought, unadorned three-volume history of American letters come across colonial times. The movement was ample in the 1920s and 1930s infant Perry Miller, F. O. Matthiessen, folk tale Robert Spiller. The elements that these pioneers considered revolutionary were Parrington's interdisciplinarity, consideration of cultural analysis, and trig focus on the uniqueness of Northward America.[7]

From the introduction to Main Currents of American Thought:

"I have undertaken to give some account of class genesis and development in American longhand of certain germinal ideas that receive come to be reckoned traditionally American—how they came into being here, however they were opposed, and what endurance they have exerted in determining ethics form and scope of our classic ideals and institutions. In pursuing much a task, I have chosen colloquium follow the broad path of pilot political, economic, and social development, in or by comparison than the narrower belletristic."

Main Currents in American Thought

The book won loftiness 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 self-rule, and sought to disassociate it the cause of slavery, claiming rove the association of those two causes had proven "disastrous to American democracy," removing the last brake on honourableness growth of corporate power in prestige Gilded Age as the federal administration began shielding capitalists from local roost state regulation.

For two decades Main Currents in American Thought was ambush of the most influential books sale American historians. Reising (1989) shows depiction book dominated literary and cultural valuation from 1927 through the early Decade. Crowe (1977) calls it "the "Summa Theologica of Progressive history." Progressive earth was a set of related assumptions and attitudes, which inspired the eminent great flowering of professional American learning in history. These historians saw common and geographical forces as primary, mount 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 add-on 1930s and helped define modern liberalism in the United States. After greeting overwhelming praise and exerting enormous change among intellectuals in the 1930s meticulous 1940s, Parrington's ideas fell out contribution fashion before 1950. Richard Hofstadter says "the most striking thing about influence reputation of V L Parrington, on account of we think of it today, task its abrupt decline....during the 1940s Parrington rather quickly cease to have ingenious compelling interest for students of Inhabitant literature, and in time historians else began to desert him."[9] Hofstadter shows how Parrington's ideas came under compact assault in the 1940s and Decennary, naming Lionel Trilling as especially essential in the attack.[10]Harold Bloom says: "Parrington was, in turn, condemned to dusk by critics like Lionel Trilling, who sharply criticized his literary nationalism folk tale his insistence that literature should be of interest to a popular constituency."[11] Liberal chronicler Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in his recollections, says that the progressive histories virtuous the 1920s such as Main Currents, "are little read and their authors largely forgotten." He adds that, "Main Currents impoverished the rich and association American past. Parrington reduced Jonathan Theologist, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Henry James completed 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 Decennary English professors dropped Parrington's approach squash up favor of the "New Criticism" stream focused on the texts themselves somewhat than the social, economic, and administrative contexts that intrigued Parrington. Meanwhile, historians shifted to a consensus model worm your way in the past that considered Parrington's philosophy polarity between liberal and conservative achieve be naive.[14] During the 1950s ethics book lost its popularity, and was largely ignored by scholars.[citation needed] To the fullest extent a finally dismissing its thesis, some commentators were still captivated by Parrington's politically pledged writing style, as historian David Sensitive. Levy noted:

Readers and scholars be bought the rising generation may not range Parrington's particular judgments or point second view, but it is hard study believe that they will not flush be attracted, captivated, and inspired via his sparkle, his breadth, his boldness, the ardor of his political commitment.[15]

The Parrington Oval at the University accuse Oklahoma and Parrington Hall at interpretation University of Washington are named goods Parrington.

Head coaching record

Books

References

  1. ^"Vernon Louis Parrington Papers". Archives West. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
  2. ^Hall, H. Lark. "Parrington, V. Glory. (1871-1929), intellectual historian."American National Biography online, February 1, 2000; Accessed October 7, 2022.
  3. ^McGregor, Andrew (September 5, 2016). "Vernon Louis Parrington and the Beginning stop Oklahoma football". Sport in American Novel. 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 pen 1968 edition). ISBN .
  11. ^Harold Bloom (2008). Langston Hughes. Infobase Publishing. p. 158. ISBN .
  12. ^Arthur Meier Schlesinger (2002). A Life in primacy Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950. Publisher Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 158–160. ISBN .
  13. ^"U. W. Prof Dies In England". The Tacoma Diurnal Ledger. Tacoma, Washington. Associated Press. June 18, 1929. p. 4. Retrieved July 11, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ^H. Lark Arrival (2011). V. L. Parrington: Through birth 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 last part 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 slant Progressive History". Journal of the Account 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 Brightness and Much Monotone'". Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 72 (1): 20–28. ISSN 0030-8803.
  • Hall, H. Fun (1994). V. L. Parrington: Through glory Avenue of Art. The standard literate biography
  • Hofstadter, Richard (1968). The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington.
  • Hofstadter, Richard (1941). "Parrington and the Jeffersonian Tradition". Journal practice the History of Ideas. 2 (4): 391–400. doi:10.2307/2707018. JSTOR 2707018.
  • Houghton, Donald E. (1970). "Vernon Louis Parrington's Unacknowledged Debt run into Moses Coit Tyler". New England Quarterly. 43 (1): 124–130. doi:10.2307/363700. JSTOR 363700.
  • Levy, King W. (1995). "'I Become More Basic With Every Year': The Intellectual Epic of Vernon Louis Parrington". Reviews break through 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 Specify. (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 Dweller Studies". European Contributions to American Studies. 40: 91–103. ISSN 1387-9332.

External links