Vernacular Scholarship

Abstract

On April 25, 1957, a young professor from the University of Minnesota presented his lecture “The Vernacular Tradition in American Literature” at the University of Mainz, Germany. Leo Marx began his talk with a humble gesture. Thanking his European colleagues for “not allowing [him] to forget that American literature is different,” he pondered, “What is different, after all, about American literature?"¹

In that postwar period [the vernacular] functioned among the founding premises for the institutionalization of literary American Studies

—Jonathan Arac, Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of Criticism in Our Time

Vernacular is, no less than the styles associated with aristocracy, a gesture toward perfection. Which is to suggest that although the perfection toward which it moves is democratic rather than aristocratic, there is no necessary contradiction between our vernacular style and the pursuit of excellence.

—Ralph Ellison, Going to the Territory