Literary scholar Lawrence Buell, in his excellent New England Literary Culture, explored one of the most important ideas related to the antebellum Romantic thinkers–an idea that he defines as “literary scripturism.” (more…)

Just in case you didnt get enough on Emerson back in February (see here and here), this is an encore performance. (more…)

One of the great things about blogging is the ability to bounce ideas off people much smarter than yourself. Therefore, I want to just throw one of my thoughts out and hope that an engaging discussion on the topic will follow. (more…)

I spent way too much time on Saturday going through the Virginia Sorensen papers collection in BYU’s Special Collections. (more…)

The following was printed in Times and Seasons, September 1, 1842. (more…)

One topic I find most interesting about Mormonism is the ability of the Latter-day Saints to create the sacred. (more…)

A few months ago, while traveling on a rickety bus in Peru from Cusco to Puno, I read Craig Campbell’s Images of the New Jerusalem: Latter Day Saint Faction Interpretation of Independence, Missouri. (more…)

I am currently trying to situate Joseph Smith within the larger American romantic movement, and am hoping for some help. While there are a lot of similarities between Smith and the likes of Emerson, I also agree with Clark in believing that these similarities can be easily overstated (see here and here). While both hoped to collapse the distance between the sacred and the profane, I just can’t get over Joseph’s institutional thought. To me, while they both wanted to bring people into the presence of God, Emerson focused on self-reliance and nature while Joseph utilized the priesthood. It seems like for the early Mormons romanticism merely serv (more…)

If you are looking for a post that explores the rich theological possibilities of theodicy, this post is not it. While I find the topic interesting, I don’t want to address the questions associated with it here. Rather, I want to use the topic of theodicy as a starting point for a discussion on how we use Joseph’s teachings. (more…)

We as Latter-day Saints love to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson. (more…)

When Joseph the Prophet and Hyrum the Patriarch were murdered, the Mormon community felt as if the worst event possible had happened. (more…)

This last weekend, while reading a book discussing the transition of Mormonism in the early twentieth century, the same thought came to my mind that has come hundreds of times (and I’m sure that it is the same for many of you): someone needs to write a scholarly biography on Joseph F. Smith.

So, this got me thinking. What other books on Mormon history still need to be written? The comments in a past post show that more work still needs to be done on persecution narratives. In a graduate course the other day, several of us co-bloggers discussed the need for a book to explore the idea of “theo-democracy,” as seen in the early Church. Another book on my “wish list” would be a biography on Oliver Cowdery.

What unwritten books are on your “wish list”?

In his 1993 Tanner Lecture delivered to the Mormon History Association, historian Richard Hughes suggested that “romanticism quickly emerged as the defining intellectual influence [of the Mormon Church] … and this was the difference that made all the difference.”[1] In a similar vein, Jacksonian scholar and Joseph Smith biographer Robert Remini concluded that ”Joseph was a romantic to his innermost fiber.”[2] The connection between romanticism and early Mormonism is a fascinating one that deserves further attention. (more…)

In elders quorum yesterday, we discussed the first chapter in the new Joseph Smith Manual. Expectedly, it treated the First Vision and the class discussed how the First Vision was the great starting point of the Restoration and Joseph Smith’s prophetic career. (more…)

In her novel A Little Lower than the Angels, Virginia Sorensen writes of a fictional family living in Nauvoo, Illinois. (more…)

While in Liberty Jail, Joseph had a lot of time to meditate upon his latest year’s experiences. The Church had been forced from Ohio, some of his closest friends had turned on him, and now his followers were being expelled from the state of Missouri. After spending four months in prison, he reflects on many of these topics in a letter dictated to the rest of the church. Full of emotion, struggle, and comfort, this letter has become famous among LDS circles, and parts of it were extracted to form three revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants. However, while going over it again recently, a portion which was not canonized caught my attention (more…)

Continuing on a previous post from earlier this week, I would now like to discuss a specific example of Mormon folklore. In preparation for the Folklore Society of Utah Conference this Saturday, I have collected close to 100 interviews of college-aged students regarding the practice of polygamy. I have discovered that as a result of the Church being virtually silent when it comes to the purposes of polygamy in authoritative discourse and writings, the most common way of learning about it is through folklore. This has lead to a wide diversity on when it was initiated, why it was practiced, and what will happen with it concerning the future. (more…)

We have all heard the stories. Joseph never losing a game in stick-pull, the Japanese bomber who’s bomb wouldn’t release while flying over the Laie Temple during the attack on Pearl Harbor, the hundreds of Three Nephite Stoies, the thousands of J. Golden Kimball stories, etc. Our culture is absolutely filled with folkloric stories. This has been noticed by outside scholars, and almost every major folklore conference has several sessions discussing Mormon folklore. Some have even suggested the the Mormon Culture has more folklore stories than any other subculture in America. (more…)

One of the objectives for most Mormon historians today (including this blog) is to attempt to place Joseph Smith within his American framework. One author who has succeeded the most in this attempt is Richard Bushman, author of Rough Stone Rolling. However, in his address at The Worlds of Joseph Smith Symposium in the Library of Congress, he spoke about putting limits on this type of approach. In it, he makes several arguments as to why Joseph should be placed within a larger framework than just American religious history.

First, he stated why he feels this “transnational” approach is necessary. (more…)

As explored elsewhere, novel reading/writing did not have a major stronghold in 19th century Mormonism. This sentiment changed with Orson Whitney’s call for “home literature” around the turn of the 20th century, novels became more common both for past-time reading as well as a career in writing. These were often didactic tales teaching morals with a simple plot, usually with the intention of building faith. Very characteristic of the neo-classicism era, they found historical accuracy not as important in their tales as the message gleaned from them. A modern-day (more…)