V. L. Parrington

V. L. Parrington PDF Author: H. Lark Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351300261
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
H. Lark Hall presents the first comprehensive biography of Vernon Louis Parrington (1871-1929). The recipient of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize in history for the first two volumes of his Main Currents in American Thought, Parrington remains one of the most influential literary and historical scholars of the early twentieth century.Parrington was a man in search of a personal myth. He found his self-image successively mirrored in Victorian novels, painting, poetry, populism, religion, the arts and crafts movement, American literature, and American history. These changes were also reflected in his teaching as a professor of English - at the College of Emporia, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Washington. Published late in his career, the two volumes of Main Currents represented the culmination of his search.Drawing upon his personal papers - including correspondence, diaries, and student course work, Main Currents chapter drafts, and other unpublished writings - Hall traces Parrington's intellectual development from his Midwestern childhood through his mid-life engagement with English poet and artist William Morris, then from the radical impact of "the new history" to the tempered post World War One reflection of his career at the University of Washington. Hall's reinterpretation of Main Currents emphasizes Parrington's concern with the drama of the life of the mind and links his historical viewpoint to his own personal history.

Progressive Historians

Progressive Historians PDF Author: Richard Hofstadter
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307809609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 636

Book Description
Richard Hofstadter, the distinguished historian and twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, brilliantly assesses the ideas and contributions of the three major American interpretive historians of the twentieth century: Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles A. Beard and V.L. Parrington. These men, whose views of history were shaped in large part by the political battles of the Progressive era, provided the Progressive movement with a usable past and the American liberal mind with a historical tradition. The Progressive Historians is at once a critique of historical thought during this decisive period of American development and an account of how these three writers led American historians into the controversial political world of the twentieth century. Turner, in developing his idea that American democracy is the outcome of the experience of frontier expansion and the settlement of the West, introduced his fellow historians to a set of new concepts and methods, and in doing so doing re-drew the guidelines of American historiography. Beard insisted upon the elitist origins of the Constitution, crusaded for the economic interpretation of history, and ultimately staked his historical reputation on an isolationist view of recent American foreign policy. Parrington emphasized the moral and social functions of literature, and read the history of literature as a history of the national political mind. In recent years, the tide has run against the Progressive historians, as one specialist after another has taken issue with their interpretations. The movement of contemporary historical thought has led to a rediscovery of the complexity of the American past. Although he cannot share the faith of the Progressive historians in the sufficiency of American liberalism as a guide to the modern world, Richard Hofstadter believes we have much to learn about ourselves from a reconsideration of their insights.

V. L. Parrington

V. L. Parrington PDF Author: H. Lark Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135130027X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Book Description
H. Lark Hall presents the first comprehensive biography of Vernon Louis Parrington (1871-1929). The recipient of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize in history for the first two volumes of his Main Currents in American Thought, Parrington remains one of the most influential literary and historical scholars of the early twentieth century.Parrington was a man in search of a personal myth. He found his self-image successively mirrored in Victorian novels, painting, poetry, populism, religion, the arts and crafts movement, American literature, and American history. These changes were also reflected in his teaching as a professor of English - at the College of Emporia, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Washington. Published late in his career, the two volumes of Main Currents represented the culmination of his search.Drawing upon his personal papers - including correspondence, diaries, and student course work, Main Currents chapter drafts, and other unpublished writings - Hall traces Parrington's intellectual development from his Midwestern childhood through his mid-life engagement with English poet and artist William Morris, then from the radical impact of "the new history" to the tempered post World War One reflection of his career at the University of Washington. Hall's reinterpretation of Main Currents emphasizes Parrington's concern with the drama of the life of the mind and links his historical viewpoint to his own personal history.

The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800

The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800 PDF Author: Vernon Louis Parrington
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806120805
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Book Description
Examines the writings of John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine, and Thomas Jefferson

Documents of American Realism and Naturalism

Documents of American Realism and Naturalism PDF Author: Donald Pizer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Book Description
Donald Pizer presents the major critical discussions of American realism and naturalism from the beginnings of the movement in the 1870s to the present. He includes the most often cited discussions ranging from William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Frank Norris in the late nineteenth century to those by V. L. Parrington, Malcolm Cowley, and Lionel Trilling in the early twentieth century. To provide the full context for the effort to interpret the nature and significance of realism and naturalism during the periods when the movements were live issues on the critical scene, however, he also includes many uncollected essays. His selections since World War II reflect the major recent tendencies in academic criticism of the movements. Through introductions to each of the three sections, Pizer provides background, delineating the underlying issues motivating attempts to attack, defend, or describe American realism and naturalism. In particular, Pizer attempts to reveal the close ties between criticism of the two movements and significant cultural concerns of the period in which the criticism appeared. Before each selection, Pizer provides a brief biographical note and establishes the cultural milieu in which the essay was originally published. He closes his anthology with a bibliography of twentieth-century academic criticism of American realism and naturalism.

Disability Theory

Disability Theory PDF Author: Tobin Anthony Siebers
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472122223
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
"Disability Theory is just the book we've been waiting for. Clear, cogent, compelling analyses of the tension between the 'social model' of disability and the material details of impairment; of identity politics and unstable identities; of capability rights and human interdependence; of disability and law, disability as masquerade, disability and sexuality, disability and democracy---they're all here, in beautifully crafted and intellectually startling essays. Disability Theory is a field-defining book: and if you're curious about what 'disability' has to do with 'theory,' it's just the book you've been waiting for, too." ---Michael Bérubé, Pennsylvania State University "Disability Theory is magisterially written, thoroughly researched, and polemically powerful. It will be controversial in a number of areas and will probably ruffle feathers both in disability studies as well as in realms of cultural theory. And that's all to the good." ---Michael Davidson, University of California, San Diego "Not only is Disability Theory a groundbreaking contribution to disability studies, it is also a bold, ambitious and much needed revision to a number of adjacent and overlapping fields including cultural studies, literary theory, queer theory, and critical race studies. Siebers has written a powerful manifesto that calls theory to account and forces readers to think beyond our comfort zones." ---Helen Deutsch, University of California, Los Angeles Intelligent, provocative, and challenging, Disability Theory revolutionizes the terrain of theory by providing indisputable evidence of the value and utility that a disability studies perspective can bring to key critical and cultural questions. Tobin Siebers persuasively argues that disability studies transfigures basic assumptions about identity, ideology, language, politics, social oppression, and the body. At the same time, he advances the emerging field of disability studies by putting its core issues into contact with signal thinkers in cultural studies, literary theory, queer theory, gender studies, and critical race theory. Tobin Siebers is V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor, Professor of English Language and Literature, and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. A volume in the series Corporealities: Discourses of Disability Illustration: Pattern by Riva Lehrer, acrylic on panel, 18" X 24", 1995

The Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest PDF Author: Raymond D. Gastil
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455918
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
The Pacific Northwest--for the purposes of this book mostly Oregon and Washington--has sometimes been seen as lacking significant cultural history. Home to idyllic environmental wonders, the region has been plagued by the notion that the best and brightest often left in search of greater things, that the mainstream world was thousands of miles away--or at least as far south as California. This book describes the Pacific Northwest's search for a regional identity from the first Indian-European contacts through the late twentieth century, identifying those individuals and groups "who at least struggled to give meaning to the Northwest experience." It places particular emphasis on writers and other celebrated individuals in the arts, detailing how their lives and works both reflected the region and also enhanced its sense of self.

The University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma PDF Author: David W. Levy
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806152796
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
This book, the first in a projected three-volume definitive history, traces the University’s progress from territorial days to 1917. David W. Levy examines the people and events surrounding the school’s formation and development, chronicling the determined ambition of pioneers to transform a seemingly barren landscape into a place where a worthy institution of higher education could thrive. The University of Oklahoma was established by the territorial legislature in 1890. With that act, Norman became the educational center of the future state. Levy captures the many factors—academic, political, financial, religious—that shaped the University. Drawing on a great depth of research in primary documents, he depicts the University’s struggles to meet its goals as it confronted political interference, financial uncertainty, and troubles ranging from disastrous fires to populist witch hunts. Yet he also portrays determined teachers and optimistic students who understood the value of a college education. Written in an engaging style and enhanced by an array of historical photographs, this volume is a testimony to the citizens who overcame formidable obstacles to build a school that satisfied their ambitions and embodied their hopes for the future.

American Historical Explanations

American Historical Explanations PDF Author: Gene Wise
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452909342
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 431

Book Description
American Historical Explanations was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In this new edition of American Historical Explanations,Gene Wise expands his examination of historical thinking to include the latest work in American Studies, the new social history, ethnography, and psychohistory. Wise asserts that historians address their subjects through an intervening set of assumptions, or what he calls "explanation forms," similar to the philosophical paradigms that Thomas Kuhn has found in scientific inquiry. Through analysis of historical-cultural texts (including the work of V. L. Parrington, Lionel Trilling, and Perry Miller) he defines the forms used by several groups of American historians and traces the process by which an old form breaks down and is replaced by a new set of assumptions. Throughout, he aims to study the process of change in the history of ideas. His conclusions extend beyond historiography and will be useful for those interested in literature, social sciences, and the arts.

The Ethics of Criticism

The Ethics of Criticism PDF Author: Tobin Siebers
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501721410
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Tobin Siebers asserts that literary criticism is essentially a form of ethics. The Ethics of Criticism investigates the moral character of contemporary literary theory, assessing a wide range of theoretical approaches in terms of both the ethical presuppositions underlying the critical claims and the attitudes fostered by the approaches. Building on analyses of the moral legacies of Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and Freud, Siebers identifies the various fronts on which the concerns of critical theory impinge on those of ethics.