Despite deep popular interest in Mormon culture, scholars have not given significant attention to the religion's central scripture. The Book of Mormon is relevant to literary studies at a moment when the turn to religion and debates over the secularization thesis have captured scholarly attention. Until recently, scholarship on The Book of Mormon was largely polemical and divided between apologists and skeptics. The rise of the new Mormon history beginning in the 1960s helped bring studies of Mormonism tentatively into the mainstream academy. Historians and scholars of religious studies have examined the reception of The Book of Mormon, the rise of the religion in early American culture, and the story of its founder, Joseph Smith. By studying the long‐neglected internal workings of the text, literary critics have the opportunity to bring new scholarly techniques to bear on this highly influential American scripture.
Although it has frequently been acknowledged that first-person narration is a crucial component of The Book of Mormon’s structure, no critic has fully analyzed the nature of narrative voice in The Book of Mormon or placed its prophetic voice in historical context. This essay shows how the centrality of first-person prophet–narrators in The Book of Mormon fundamentally changed the standard narrative practice of scripture. The piece situates the text’s prophetic voice in the context of early nineteenth-century religious culture: a world of evangelical preachers, self-proclaimed prophets, historicist biblical scholars, literary Transcendentalism, and popular spiritualist mediumship—all of which produce texts that collapse narrative categories and transform the relationship between human and divine. In doing so, it moves beyond the commonplace that personal revelation is the primary distinction of LDS and Second Great Awakening–era scriptural and spiritual practice; instead, its key characteristic is the always-mediated nature of that revelation.
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