The only required textbook for the course is the first volume of Vernon L. Parrington’s Main Currents in American Thought—The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800. (Check Bookfinder for cheap copies.) Parrington’s work is, in its own right, something of a Great Book. It was a Pulitzer prize winner, and stands as one of the classics in the field of American intellectual history. It’s not an introductory text, and it is sometimes difficult. And I am not going to require you to read all of it. In fact, I will only require you to read a few sections. But I will be constantly referring to the work in my blog entries, and it will be there for you as a first, handy secondary source* when you’re trying to figure out how the primary texts* we’re reading matter in the realm of ideas. Parrington will be of particular value to you later, as you find your place in the debates and you you prepare to write your papers. For now, take a look at the book, read the introductory material, check out the table of contents, and generally size it up.
* If you don’t already know, a primary source is one written by a participant in the events covered, and a secondary source is written about the primary sources, providing commentary of some sort. A Puritan sermon will be, in our context, a primary source, and Parrington’s commentary on it a secondary source. Of course, in the long-running debates about great ideas, commentaries are made on commentaries, and what was secondary in one context can become primary in a later one. Think about something like Supreme Court rulings on constitutional matters. The US Constitution is a primary source with regard to rulings about it, but those rulings become precedents, and, therefore, primary sources with regard to later rulings. We’ll see some interesting problems that result from confusions about the primary/secondary distinction as we start to look at Wikipedia.
