Item Detail
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25018
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127
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76
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English
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The Viper on the Hearth : Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy
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New York, NY
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Oxford University Press
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228
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[1998 Mormon Historical Association Winner for Best First Book]
Published in 1997, Terryl Givens's The Viper on the Hearth was widely praised as a landmark work--indeed, The Wall Street Journal hailed it as "one of the five best books on Mormonism." Now, in the wake of a tidal wave of Mormon-inspired artistic, literary, and political activity--ranging from the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon, to the HBO series Big Love, to the political campaign of Mitt Romney--Givens presents an updated edition that addresses the continuing presence and reception of the Mormon image in contemporary culture.
The Viper on the Hearth showed how nineteenth- and twentieth-century American writers frequently cast the Mormon as a stock villain in such fictional genres as mysteries, westerns, and popular romances. If today some authors like Tom Clancy use "Mormon" as shorthand for "clean cut and patriotic," earlier writers more often depicted the Mormons as a violent and perverse people--the "viper on the hearth"--who sought to violate the domestic sphere of the mainstream. Givens is the first to reveal how popular fiction constructed an image of the Mormon as a religious and social Other. The list of authors includes both American and English writers, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes mystery to Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Dynamiter to Jack London's Star Rover.
For this edition, Givens has expanded the final chapter, shedding further light on the Mormon presence in contemporary American culture, with insightful discussions of topics ranging from the musical, The Book of Mormon, to the political campaigns of Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman.
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A Foreign Kingdom : Mormons and Polygamy in American Political Culture, 1852-1890
A House Full of Females : Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870
A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-First Century
Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith
All Abraham's Children : Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage
An "American Mahomet" : Joseph Smith, Muhammad, and the Problem of Prophets in Antebellum America
Angels in the Age of Railways
A Peculiar People : Anti-Mormonism and the Making of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America
"Archives of the Better World": The Nineteenth-Century Historian's Office and Mormonism's Archival Flexibility
A Society of Like-Minded Men : American Localism and the Mormon Expulsion from Jackson County
Authority in Mormonism : A Rational Choice Analysis
Barbarians Within the Gates : Congressional Debates on Mormon Polygamy, 1850-1879
Becoming the American Religion : The Place of Mormonism in the Development of American Religious Historiography
Building the Kingdom : A History of Mormons in America
By the Hand of Mormon : The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion
Captivity, Adoption, Marriage and Identity : Native American Children in Mormon Homes, 1847-1900
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) (Mormonism)
Clyde Forsberg's Equal Rites and the Exoticizing of Mormonism
Constructing a National Marital and Sexual Culture : Reconsidering the "Twin Relics of Barbarism"
Contesting the LDS Image : The North American Review and the Mormons, 1881-1907
Contingent Citizens: Shifting Perceptions of Latter-day Saints in American Political Culture
Converting the Saints : A Study of Religious Rivalry in America
Convicting the Mormons: The Mountain Meadows Massacre in American Culture
"Dictated by Christ" : Joseph Smith and the Politics of Revelation
Doing the Works of Abraham : Mormon Polygamy―Its Origin, Practice, and Demise
Early Mormonism's Expansive Family and the Browett women
Envisioning Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Revelations in Their Early American Contexts
Excavating Early Mormon History : The 1878 History Fact-Finding Mission of Apostles Joseph F. Smith and Orson Pratt
Exceptionally Queer : Mormon Peculiarity and US Exceptionalism
Exceptionally Queer: Mormon Peculiarity and U.S. Nationalism
Exhibiting Mormonism : The Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World's Fair
Exhibiting Theology : James E. Talmage and Mormon Public Relations, 1915-20
Feeding the Flock : The Foundations of Mormon Thought : Church and Praxis
Framing the Nation : Religion, Film, and American Belonging
From the Outside Looking In : Essays on Mormon History, Theology, and Culture
Frontier Religion : Mormons and America, 1857–1907
Frontier Religion : Mormons and America, 1857-1907
Heathen in Our Fair Land' : Presbyterian Women Missionaries in Utah, 1870-90
"How Thankful We Should Be to Know the Truth" : Zebedee Coltrin's Witness of the Heavenly Origins of Temple Ordinances
"I Cannot Refrain from Testifying" : Edith Mary Turpin's Observations about Mormonism and Plural Marriage
"I Consider the Proper Authority Rests Among the Mormons" : Oran Brownson to Orestes Brownson on Oran's Conversion to Mormonism
Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific
Irenaeus, Joseph Smith, and God-making Heresy
Joseph F. Smith: Reflections on the Man and His Times
Joseph Smith's Gold Plates: A Cultural History
Junius and Joseph : Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet
Just How "Scandalous" is the Golden Plates Story? : Academic Discourse on the Origin of the Book of Mormon
Latter-Day Prophets : Their Lives, Teachings, and Testimonies
Latter-day Saints in Washington, D.C. : History, People, and Places
Letters on Mormon Polygamy and Progeny : Eliza R. Snow and Martin Luther Holbrook, 1866-1869
Liberty to the Downtrodden : Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer
Make Yourselves Gods : Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism
Marianne Meets the Mormons: Representations of Mormonism in Nineteenth-Century France
Marking Mormon Difference : How Western Perceptions of Islam Defined the 'Mormon Menace'
Mormon cinema : Origins to 1956
Mormon Hermeneutics: Five Approaches to the Bible by the LDS Church
Mormon History
Mormonism and American Politics (Religion, Culture, and Public Life)
Mormonism and Violence : The Battles of Zion
Mormonism and White Supremacy : American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence
Mormonism in America: Itinerary to Allegiance from Joseph Smith to Mitt Romney
Mormonism : What Everyone Needs to Know
Mormon Popular Culture
Mormons, Freethinkers, and the Limits of Toleration
Mormon Women's History : Beyond Biography
Muslims Under the Mormon Eye : Theology, Rhetoric, and Personal Contacts, 1830-1910
On Signifiers and Signified: Terryl Givens and Twenty-First-Century Book of Mormon Studies
On the Way to Somewhere Else : European Sojourners in the Mormon West, 1834-1930
On Zion's Mount : Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape
"Our Religion Is Not Hostile to Real Science" : Evolution, Eugenics, and Race/Religion-Making in Mormonism's First Century
"Overwhelmingly Democratic" : Cultural Identity in Jackson County, Missouri, 1827-1833
Parley P. Pratt : The Apostle Paul of Mormonism
Peculiar Portrayals : Mormons on the Page, Stage, and Screen
Pentecost Continued : A Contemporaneous Account of the Kirtland Temple Dedication
People of Paradox : A History of Mormon Culture
Playing with Shadows : Voices of Dissent in the Mormon West
Polygamy : An Early American History
Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power : Salt Lake City, 1847-1918
Race and the Making of the Mormon People
Railroading Religion : Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West
Real vs. Rumor : How to Dispel Latter-day Myths
Reconstruction and Mormon America
Religion of a Different Color : Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness
Restless Pilgrim : Andrew Jenson's Quest for Latter-day Saint History
"Richard Howard Lecture : Railroading Independence : Pulpit Rock and the Work of Mormon Imagination"
Saints : The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days. No Unhallowed Hand 1846–1893.
Seeing Things: Technologies of Vision and the Making of Mormonism
Small Means, Great Things
Standing Apart : Mormon Historical Consciousness And The Concept Of Apostasy
Taming the Past to Conquer the Future : The Pioneer Jubilee of 1897
Terrible Revolution : Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse
Testimony and Theology : The Mormon Struggle with America's Civil Religion
That "Same Old Question of Polygamy and Polygamous Living" : Some Recent Findings Regarding Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Mormon Polygamy
"The Assault of Laughter" : The Comic Attack On Mormon Polygamy in Popular Literature
The Book of Mormon as Amerindian Apocalypse
The Brief History and Perpetually Exciting Future of Mormon Literary Studies
The church family in nineteenth-century America : Mormonism and the public private divide
The Crisis of Mormon Christology : History, Progress, and Protestantism, 1880-1930
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism
The Doctrinal and Commitment Functions of Patriarchal Blessings in Early Mormon Development
The Doctrine and Covenants: Revelations in Context: The 37th Annual Brigham Young University Sidney B. Sperry Symposium
"The Highest Class of Adulterers and Whoremongers" : Plural Marriage, the Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), and the Construction of Memory
The J. Golden Kimball Stories
The Latter-Day Saint Experience in America
The Latter-day Saint Image in the British Mind
The Long Honeymoon : Jan Shipps Among the Mormons
The Mormon Church in Utah
The Mormon Image in the American Mind : Fifty Years of Public Perception
The Mormon Menace : Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South
The Mormon Question : Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America
The Mormons, the Victorians, and the Idea of Greater Britain
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
The Politics of American Religious Identity : The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle
The Spirituality of Sport : Los Mormones in Argentina, 1938–1943
The Translator and the Ghostwriter : Joseph Smith and W. W. Phelps
The Whore of Babylon and the Abomination of Abominations : Nineteenth-Century Catholic and Mormon Mutual Perceptions and Religious Identity
The Worldwide Church : Mormonism as a Global Religion
Thomas L. Kane and Nineteenth-Century American Culture
"To Dress It and to Keep It" : Toward a Mormon Theology of Work
Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Forum: Terryl Givens, Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy
Us-Them Tribalism and Early Mormonsim
Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath
Vernacular Mormonism : The Development of Latter-Day Saint Apocalyptic (1830-1930)
What is Mormonism? A Student’s Introduction
Wrestling the Angel : The Foundations of Mormon Thought : Cosmos, God, Humanity
Zion as Fiction : Gender, Early RLDS Novels, and the Politics of Place -
A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
An American Prophet's Record : The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith
A New Witness for Christ in America
An Ordered Love : The Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopias--The Shakers, The Mormons, and The Oneida Community
Approaching Zion
Beyond Existing Bounds
Camp Floyd and the Mormons : The Utah War
Carthage Conspiracy : The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith
'Essential Gestures' : Craft and Calling in Contemporary Mormon Letters
Exiles in a Land of Liberty : Mormonism's Conflict with American Culture, 1830-1846
Federal Government Efforts to 'Americanize' Utah before Admission to Statehood
George Catlin, Brigham Young, and the Plains Indians
Gleanings By the Way
History of Caldwell and Livingston Counties, Missouri
History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri Upon the Mormons
How to Become a People : The Mormon Scenario
How to Write an Anti-Mormon Book
Illustrated Periodical Images of Mormons, 1850-1860
In Mormon Circles : Gentiles, Jack Mormons, and Latter-day Saints
In Old Nauvoo : Everyday Life in the City of Joseph
Intolerable Zion : The Image of Mormonism in Nineteenth Century American Literature
Joseph Smith, An American Muhammad? An Essay on the Perils of Historical Analogy
Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism
Joseph Smith's First Vision : The First Vision in its Historical Context
Life in Utah; or, The Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism
Mesmerism and Mormonism
Mormonism and American Culture
Mormonism and the Moral Majority Make Strange Bedfellows? An Exploratory Critique
Mormonism in Conflict : The Nauvoo Years
Mormonism's Encounter with Spiritualism
Mormonism : The Story of a New Religious Tradition
Mormon Polygamy : A History
Mormon Redress Petitions : Documents of the 1833-1838 Missouri Conflict
New Minority Religions As Heresies
No Man Knows My History : The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet
Notes on Mormon Polygamy
Notes on Mormon Polygamy
Perpetuation of a Myth : Mormon Danites in Five Western Novels, 1840-1890
Phrenology among the Mormons
Quest for Empire : The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History
Quest for Refuge : The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism
Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans
Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism
Saints, Sinners, and Scribes : A Look at the Mormons in Fiction
Sinners and Saints : A Tour across the States, and Round them, with Three Months among the Mormons
Sociological Perspectives on the Mormon Subculture
'Tell It All' : The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism
The American Religion : The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation
The Angel and the Beehive : The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation
The Armies of God
The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt
The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California
The Colorless Skein of Life : Threats to the Private Sphere in Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet
The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945
The Crusades against the Masons, Catholics, and Mormons : Separate Waves of a Common Current
The Democratization of American Christianity
The History of Illinois, from Its First Discovery and Settlement, to the Present Time
The History of the Saints : Or, An Expose of Joe Smith and Mormonism
The Missouri and Illinois Mormons in Ante-Bellum Fiction
The Missouri Redress Petitions : A Reappraisal of Mormon Persecutions in Missouri
The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859
The Mormon Experience : A History of the Latter-day Saints
The Mormon Graphic Image, 1834-1914 : Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations
The Mormon Puzzle ; and How to Solve It
The Mormon Question Enters National Politics, 1850-1856
The Mormons
The Mormons : Who and What They Are
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
The Nauvoo Charter : A Reinterpretation
The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith
The Rise of a New World Faith
The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor
The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion
Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass : The Art of Telling Tales about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young
Tolstoy and Mormonism
View of the Hebrews, or, The Tribes of Israel in America