Vernon Louis Parrington

Vernon Louis Parrington ( born August 3, 1871 in Aurora, Illinois, † June 16, 1929 in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England ) was an American historian and literary scholar. His principal work, published in 1927-1930 Main Currents in American Thought is still considered a milestone in American intellectual history and is one of the "founding texts" of American Studies.

Life

Parrington grew up in the rural Midwest of the USA on, first in Aurora ( Illinois), then from 1877 in Kansas. From 1888, he attended the College of Emporia small town in which his father was restructuring judge. In 1891 he was able to change with the help of a scholarship of $ 150 to the prestigious Harvard University. There he took courses in English literary history, including at Barrett Wendell. In 1893 he graduated to B. A. and returned to Emporia, where he first taught English and French, and organized the building of the Faculty of English Language and Literature.

In 1897 he moved to the University of Oklahoma, where he was until 1903 also the Chairman and only member of the English faculty; 1897-1900, he was also the coach of the football team of the University. 1908 Parrington was next to some other professors victim of a now infamous " purge " conservative Christian circles, especially the local Southern Methodist Church, influence had won on the University Board and obtained the dismissal of too "liberal " faculty, especially those that tobacco and alcohol awards for and amused at dance festivals. Parrington was all of these vices guilty and was summarily dismissed.

He moved to the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was to remain until his death at the Department of English. Even in later years, as Parrington an academic reputation had developed and more established universities wanted him to poach, he remained steadfast - mainly because he harbored a strong dislike of the established literature and university operating the East Coast. This aversion was reinforced in 1908 when he refused to Harvard University after his release in Oklahoma admission to a doctoral program, because he was considered too old. Also, the annual meetings of the Modern Language Association, the governing body of the American philologist, he was regularly away. Instead, he devoted himself with great commitment to the teaching of his provincial university. The number of his publications until 1927 is clear: In 1921, he wrote for the Pacific Review an essay on James Branch Cabell, 1926 provide an introduction to an anthology of works by the Connecticut Wits and 1927, a short monograph on Sinclair Lewis; In 1920 he contributed two chapters to the Cambridge History of English and American Literature at ( Hawthorne and American Literature ).

More surprised the American literary scene, as in 1927 the first two volumes of Main Currents Parringtons pioneering work in American Thought was published. Since his time in Oklahoma to Parrington had to deal more with the American ideas and literary history, and collected material for an overview of work on this subject. After several publishers had rejected the publication sighted Van Wyck Brooks, at that time editor for the prestigious publisher Harcourt Brace, the manuscript, recognized its quality and took Parrington under contract. The volumes reaped rave reviews and in 1928 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history.

Parrington 1929 traveled with his family to England to the sudden frenzy to escape his person and finish the last volume of Main Currents in the rural seclusion of a village in Gloucestershire. On June 16th of the year, he died of a heart attack. The employees of its faculty in Washington exhibited his manuscripts together the third and last volume; he appeared posthumously in 1930.

Main Currents in American Thought

His major work, Main Currents in American Thought is still regarded as the standard work on American history of ideas. Parringtons interpretation of American literary history gave the American a methodological as an ideological framework that shaped this discipline over decades. Parrington examined the traits of the alleged American national character - idealism, liberalism, individualism - to identify in the literature of the country. One focus of the Main Currents is the competition between two political currents in the early years of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson's egalitarian elitism social and political concept, which Parrington opted for the latter occurred.