ABSTRACT
The events that occurred during that closure process further colored Vernon Louis Parrington view of American culture, leaving a dark stain on his entire midwestern experience and adding to the range of his critical palate. The dynamics and components of crucial intellectual transition were, it is true, refined and focused once his Oklahoma chapter reached closure and he began his nearly twenty-one-year tenure in Seattle. Parrington had included American authors in several courses conducted in his first Oklahoma year, encouraged his composition students to be aware of American speech, and recommended grounding in American literature as a requisite for undergraduate standing. The socially conservative aestheticism of the New Humanists did resonate the long-held Arnoldian chord in Parrington’s view of culture, as his 1906 essay “Thoughts on the Teaching of Literature” makes clear. His European experience had even more far-reaching effects, altering his conception of culture.
