Item Detail
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11456
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1
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0
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English
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Poetic Language in Nineteenth Century Mormonism : A Study of Semiotic Phenomenology in Communication and Culture
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Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
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Ph.D. diss.
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"The sudden birth of Mormonism in the midst of modern America is a phenomenon hard to explain by Structuralist anthropology. But if we regard its founder, Joseph Smith (=JS), as a poet, we can explain its mythology and kinship system (polygamy) as a product of two sides of one coin, JS's "desire in language" in Julia Kristeva's sense. The purpose of this dissertation is to show that JS was a poet, and his scriptures were poetry. For that purpose, we analyze The Book of Abraham, his only scripture containing pictures from the beginning. The analyses are pursued from the perspectives of semiotic phenomenology. Jacques Derrida's theory of "arche-trace" and "rebus" in Of Grammatology is utilized to show that Egyptian papyrus appeared in JS's mind as a Hebraic writing of Abraham. Pictures in the papyrus themselves are analyzed as representing van Gennep/Victor Turner type of "ritual process," and are shown how JS creatively misread ("misprisioned" in Harold Bloom's term) the structure of this process, and how he wrote a new story out of it. Applying Bloom's theory of poetics of anxiety and influence, JS's ontological status is analyzed, and his invention of a new concept of Adam is explained as JS's "metalepsis." Then we consider whether this entire phenomenon of JS's writing is within what Derrida called "the closure" of "the logo-phonocentrism" of "the metaphysics of presence," and is answered as positive. We conclude that The Book of Abraham is poetry in Derrida's sense of "espacement" and in Umbreto Eco's sense of "Kabbalah," and thus JS is a poet. This conclusion is applied to the analysis of The Book of Mormon, and is shown that it is neither a gift of God nor a plagiarism, but a product of an authentic poetic phenomenon." [Author's abstract]