Item Detail
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28278
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4
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4
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English
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Literary Dimensions of Mormon Autobiography
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Dialogue : A Journal of Mormon Thought
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Spring 1978
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11
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2
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Stanford, CA
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Dialogue Foundation
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75-80
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[1978 Association of Mormon Letters Winner for Best Criticism]
Among Mormons, autobiography has been for decades one of the most widespread modes of literary expression and can be related to the larger tradition of the genre in terms of the nineteenth-century origin of the Church. Some of the finest and most moving examples of Mormon autobiography owe their very existence to the admonitions of early church leaders that institutional as well as personal histories should be kept. One thinks immediately of The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt and of the various autobiographical sketches of Joseph Smith, most especially that contained in the "Writings of Joseph Smith" in the Pearl of Great Price. Although The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt was edited possibly rather heavily, it nonetheless stands as one of the greatest monuments to the spirit of self-depiction in the literary history of the Church. In their majestic simplicity, both works are towering examples of self-expository genius, and they paradigmatically represent important characteristics of the tradition that arose in their wake. [From the text]