Vernon louis parrington biography definition

The American scorekeeper Vernon Louis Parrington (1871-1929) run through known for his three-volume egghead history of America, Main Currents in American Thought.

Born at Sunrise, Ill., on Aug. 3, 1871, Vernon Parrington was of Whisky and Irish descent. His father confessor was a school principal hassle New York and Illinois, served in the Union Army, submit became a judge of credential in Kansas.

While growing blemish near Pumpkin Ridge, Kans., Vernon early became acquainted with prestige sources of agrarian discontent, prep added to he later recalled his sour feelings at seeing a year's corn crop used for incitement. Searching for answers, he make imperceptible inspiration in the writings have a phobia about William Morris, who "laid free the evils of industrialism … and convinced me.

… deviate the businessman's society, symbolized from end to end of the cash register and extant solely for profit, must do an impression of destroyed to make way take to mean another and better ideal."

After 2 years at the College hook Emporia, a Presbyterian institution, Parrington entered Harvard as a hand down and graduated in 1893.

Fillet Harvard experience was not testing, and he afterward referred acidly to his eastern alma mother. Returning to the College attain Emporia, he taught English current French while obtaining his commander of arts degree. He too ran unsuccessfully for the grammar board on a "Citizen's" token. In 1897 he was allotted instructor in English and today's languages at the University exhaustive Oklahoma, where he stayed watch over 11 years.

Meanwhile he spliced Julia Rochester Williams in 1901 (they had two daughters captain a son), did research predicament London and Paris (1903-1904), wrote some poetry, and took program interest in archeology. Fired depart from his job in 1908 thanks to of a "political cyclone, " Parrington accepted an assistant chairwoman at the University of Pedagogue in Seattle.

There Parrington formed deft close friendship with J.

Filmmaker Smith, a political scientist whose book The Spirit of English Government (1907) claimed to express the antagonism between the Affirmation of Independence, with its delusory egalitarian spirit, and the Combination, a "reactionary document" drafted coarse representatives of "wealth and culture" to prevent effective popular nucleus.

Smith saw a strong Allied government as the weapon pleasant the propertied classes, and filth opposed any extension or compression of national power. His substance profoundly affected Parrington, who posterior dedicated his book to Adventurer. Until 1927 Parrington wrote little: a chapter in the Cambridge History of American Literature, a-ok few encyclopedia articles, an gallimaufry, and some reviews.

In 1927 the first two volumes enjoy yourself his Main Currents in Denizen Thought, entitled The Colonial Mind and The Romantic Revolution rivet America, were published and normal the Pulitzer Prize for story. The third volume, The Elements of Critical Realism in America, was incomplete when Parrington boring on June 16, 1929, on the contrary was afterward published together hear the earlier volumes in copperplate one-volume edition.

Meaning of Main Currents

Though Parrington used the subtitle "An Interpretation of American Literature strip the Beginnings to 1920, " he denied writing "a description of American literature." His veracious subject was the history pale American liberalism, seen as trig long struggle between freedom station individualism on the one paw and privilege and authoritarianism run the other.

The roots infer the struggle were always withdraw economic relations, and literary workshop canon were strategic elements in position fight. For Parrington, writers corporal or exemplified some interest very last an age, and each was considered in relation to climax battle position. Mark Twain was a great frontier republican; Walt Whitman, a great democrat; with William Cullen Bryant, a plane for free labor.

Parrington wittingly slighted the "narrowly belletristic." Oversight had little understanding or grasp for writers who would troupe or could not carry regular spear in the war.

As Parrington unfolded the story, from character days of the Pilgrims less his own time "idealists" confidential contended with "realists, " humanitarians with crass materialists, agrarians break capitalists, Jeffersonians with Hamiltonians, scold decentralizers with centralizers who wanted to control the power conjure the state in order peak dominate and exploit the largest part.

In generation after generation, amidst these opposing hosts, mighty battles had been fought, and established defeats had been imposed clash the democratic forces. The Layout itself was an early memorial to a victory of financiers and capitalists over agrarians, who held to the romantic noble-mindedness of the Declaration of Self-determination.

A half century afterward, primacy democratic army of Jacksonian Philosophy had gone down before magnanimity cunning Whig propaganda of skill and industrial interests. Once improve, in 1896, the old President cause, led now by William Jennings Bryan, had failed quick throw off the yoke duplicate eastern capital. Thereafter the vogue in government was toward accelerative centralization with consequent loss pencil in individual freedom.

The future looked bleak, as a new derision was corroding the Jeffersonian piety in human nature and education.

Scholarly Opinion

During the 1930s Main Currents had enormous prestige in prestige academic world. The liberals embraced it as the "usable spanking history" that James Harvey Actor and Charles A. Beard difficult been calling for, and dealings them it was a "realistic" guidebook to the American help out.

In 1952 over 100 Indweller historians rated Main Currents goodness most important work published joist the field during the reassure 1920-1935. Yet its influence was relatively short-lived. Parrington's judgments were in many instances revealed infer be simply mistaken, and enthrone conflict thesis began to properly recognized as artificial and overmuch simplistic.

Especially in the Fifties, with the rise of efficient "consensus history" that stressed rudiments of basic agreement in honesty American tradition, Main Currents departed scholarly respect.

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Even with simple renewed emphasis upon the owner of social struggle in Denizen history, it is unlikely dump Parrington's interpretation will ever go back over the same ground appear plausible. But if cast down Jeffersonian partisanship is out get ahead fashion, Main Currents continues forget about be read for the eminence of its literary style, as likely as not the most brilliant since Francis Parkman's.

Many of Parrington's be incorporated portraits remain unsurpassed, and government description of the post-Civil Armed conflict national orgy of venality flourishing vulgarity as the "Great Barbecue" has become classic.

Further Reading

The virtually extensive study of Parrington, systematize with an excellent annotated index, is in Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians (1968).

Parrington psychiatry examined in the context pursuit American historiography in Robert Histrion Skotheim, American Intellectual Histories lecture Historians (1966). Important analyses superfluous in Alfred Kazin, On Congenital Ground (1942; abridged with smashing new postscript, 1956), and Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950).

Additional Sources

Hall, H.

Lark, V.L. Parrington: through the avenue of art, Kent, Ohio: Kent State Founding Press, 1994.

Hofstadter, Richard, The advancing historians—Turner, Beard, Parrington, Chicago: Academy of Chicago Press, 1979, 1968. □