Item Detail
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27460
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0
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0
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English
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Melville and the Mormons
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Visionary of the Word : Melville and Religion
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Evanston, IL
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Northwestern University Press
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159-184
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Tracking Melville's reflections on Mormon doctrine across the trajectory of his career suggests that an initial sympathy for the LDS church transitioned to disapproval and revulsion during the 1850s, when Brigham Young and James Strang led two different branches o the sect founded by Smith in well-publicized acts of resistance to federal authority. Efforts to assess Melville's relationship with the LDS church thus depend, at least in part on the question of which Melville one is considering--the young novelist or the seasoned lecturer and poet. Charting the course of that relationship indicates that Melville's exposure to LDS theology may have played a role in the conception of both Mardi and Pierre (1852) and suggests that Melville is more indebted to the Mormon imaginary than readers have previously supposed. [From the text]