ABSTRACT
Vernon Louis Parrington regular teaching of American literature survey courses ensured continual contact with the past as he traced the history of American literary production. For Parrington, literature was a touchstone that measured prior changes in the cultural, social, and political environments. The direct result of Parrington’s intention to trace the thread of democracy announced in “Democracy, Economics, and Literature,” it also ties “The Democratic Spirit” closely to other Progressive Era histories and documents. An example of Parrington’s changing political emphasis is the chapter on Roger Williams, the one Puritan among his selection in Book One “who had any notion of democracy,” according to the Macmillan literary adviser. After 1916, sections of the early manuscript were taken apart, reorganized, and expanded as Parrington’s purposes and political viewpoint changed. Parrington was evidently testing out its apparent theoretical political and economic bases in his graduate seminar in American literature.
