Item Detail
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4607
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0
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4
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English
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Bayard Taylor's 'The Prophet' : Mormonism as Literary Taboo
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BYU Studies
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Winter 1974
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14
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235-47
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Schwartz attempts to explain why the Mormon nineteenth century literary image was left to hack writers. Using the overlooked poetry drama of Bayard Taylor's THE PROPHET: A TRAGEDY (1874), an exception to the rule of shallow writing, Schwartz finds that Mormonism was 'not simply ignored by America's greatest writers of the period, but rather, was consciously avoided.' (p. 236) Taylor, in fact, was strongly condemned for his use of a Mormon theme by Henry James himself. 'America's most able critics succeeded in silencing...[Taylor's] fictive study of Mormonism, and in silencing Taylor they possibly silenced other writers who may have been interested in the theme of Mormonism.' (p. 247)