The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America: Main Currents in American ThoughtVernon Parrington Routledge, 29. 9. 2017 - 484 strán (strany) This final volume of Vernon Louis Parrington's Pultzer Prize-winning study deals with the decay of romantic optimism. It shows that the cause of decay is attributed to three sources: stratifying of economics under the pressure of centralization; the rise of mechanistic science; and the emergence of a spirit of skepticism which, with teachings of the sciences and lessons of intellectuals, has resulted in the questioning of democratic ideals. Parrington presents the movement of liberalism from 1913 to 1917, and the reaction to it following World War I. He notes that liberals announced that democratic hopes had not been fulfilled; the Constitution was not a democratic instrument nor was it intended to be; and while Americans had professed to create a democracy, they had in fact created a plutocracy. Industrialization of America under the leadership of the middle class and the rise of critical attitudes towards the ideals and handiwork of that class are examined in great detail. Parrington's interpretation of the literature during this time focuses on four divisions of development: the conquest of America by the middle class; the challenge of that overlordship by democratic agrarianism; the intellectual revolution brought about by science and the appropriation of science by the middle class; and the rise of detached criticism by younger intellectuals. A new introduction by Bruce Brown highlights Parrington's life and explains the importance of this volume. |
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... romantic James Whitcomb Riley did not lack its prose children. Notably did Meredith Nicholson, William Allen White, and Booth Tarkington3 portray the village neighborliness, its wholesomeness, its spirit of democracy, until they cast ...
... romantic traditions of the plantation, the negro, the mountaineer, and 4 See Addenda for lecture notes on these writers. 5 See Addenda for brief notes on these writers. the creole; while Sidney Lanier 5 became the poet of xii. VERNON.
... romantic revolution in America—one of the most stimulating experiences the American mind has undergone—which was traced to twin forces: the influence upon an expansive generation of French romantic thought, and the spirit of robust ...
... romantic faith, will be carried over into the future, to unhorse the machine that now rides men and to leaven the sodden mass that is industrial America, is a question to which the gods as yet have given no answer. Yet it is not without ...
... romantic theories were mainly at fault and we must somehow go back to the rationalistic eighteenth century and start once more to recreate a democratic philosophy. The crux of the matter seemed to lie in the romantic conception of human ...