Samuel Eliot Morison's historical world
Subtitle: in quest of a new parkman
By: Gregory M. Pfitzer.
Publisher: Northeastern University Press
Published: 1991
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 367
Subjects: Morison, Samuel Eliot, 1887-1976.; Historiography -- United States.; Historians -- United States.; United States -- Historiography.
Description: Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976) was one of this nation's most renowned historians and the virtual founder of American maritime history. Outspoken and controversial, he struggled to reconcile his professional identity as a historian with his personal belief that historical writing needed to reach a larger popular audience.
This is the first book-length appraisal of Morison's genius. Gregory M. Pfitzer places Morison in the context of the intellectual debates that raged between professional historian-who stressed objectivity, precise investigative rules, elaborate methodologies, and inaccessible language-and the so-called amateur historians of the day, who valued sensitivity to the need for a "usable past" and a narrative writing style.
Although this is not a biography, there is nevertheless much in the work that is biographical. Pfitzer focuses on Morison's craft, the emergence of the substance and style of his writing, and on his professional relationships with Charles Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, Henry Steele Commager, Albert Bushnell Hart, Edward Channing, George Santayana, Albert Beveridge, James Truslow Adams, Van Wyck Brooks, and Charles Andrews.
Pfitzer recounts Morison's emulation of the narrative style of Francis Parkman, the famous nineteenth-century historian. A good deal of Morison's life was spent trying to become the new Parkman without letting narrative technique obscure scholarship or negate the service aspect of his historical writings.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [299]-354) and index.