Fighting Heresy with Facts : The Spiritual Journalism of
Harriet Beecher Stowe

k 2020

Fighting Heresy with Facts : The Spiritual Journalism of Harriet Beecher Stowe

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan

Basic information

Original name

Fighting Heresy with Facts : The Spiritual Journalism of Harriet Beecher Stowe

Authors

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan

Edition

In/Outside the Frame Conference, 15th International Cultural Studies Conference & 4th International Conference on Linguistics and Language Teaching and Learning, 5th-6th November 2020, University of Pardubice, Pardubice, 2020

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Prezentace na konferencích

Field of Study

60206 Specific literatures

Country of publisher

Czech Republic

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

References:

URL

Organization unit

Faculty of Arts

Keywords in English

Harriet Beecher Stowe; Uncle Toms Cabin

Abstract

V originále

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which Harriet Beecher Stowe said she first began to imagine during a Communion service, has been compared both in its own time and today to “a work of religion,” as her son and biographer put it. The hugely popular stage adaptations it inspired likewise featured overtly religious elements and were compared to churchgoing. But that spiritual and quasi-liturgical dimension exists in a peculiar juxtaposition with another of its features, one that also mattered enormously to Stowe: the novel’s reliance on documentable fact. At pains to show that she was telling the simple truth about slavery, Stowe published a companion volume, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that compiled a large body of news reports and other substantiating documents. If it seems odd that a literary work could at once be sentimental and religious yet also framed as a kind of journalism, claiming authority from both Scripture and the ephemeral writings of the passing scene, this paper will suggest that these contrasting spiritual and factual impulses were, for Stowe, essentially one and the same. In an era when traditional biblical authority was newly in question and, at the same time, a revolution in publishing and news reporting was producing massive amounts of cheap and disposable print, Stowe was one of a number of American writers looking for new ways to synthesize these two kinds of text, infusing literature with both the timeless significance of the one and the vivid immediacy of the other.

Links

MUNI/A/1204/2019, interní kód MU

Name: Researching Communication in English: Paradigms, Strategies, Developments - II (Acronym: ReComE 2020)

Investor: Masaryk University, Category A

Citovat

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan. Fighting Heresy with Facts : The Spiritual Journalism of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In In/Outside the Frame Conference, 15th International Cultural Studies Conference & 4th International Conference on Linguistics and Language Teaching and Learning, 5th-6th November 2020, University of Pardubice, Pardubice. 2020.

@proceedings{1729620,
   author = {Smith, Jeffrey Alan},
   booktitle = {In/Outside the Frame Conference, 15th International Cultural Studies Conference & 4th International Conference on Linguistics and Language Teaching and Learning, 5th-6th November 2020, University of Pardubice, Pardubice},
   keywords = {Harriet Beecher Stowe; Uncle Toms Cabin},
   language = {eng},
   title = {Fighting Heresy with Facts : The Spiritual Journalism of Harriet Beecher Stowe},
   url = {https://ff.upce.cz/ff/literature-and-cultural-studies-conference},
   year = {2020}
}

TY  - CONF
ID  - 1729620
AU  - Smith, Jeffrey Alan
PY  - 2020
TI  - Fighting Heresy with Facts : The Spiritual Journalism of Harriet Beecher Stowe
KW  - Harriet Beecher Stowe
KW  - Uncle Toms Cabin
UR  - https://ff.upce.cz/ff/literature-and-cultural-studies-conference
N2  - Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which Harriet Beecher Stowe said she first began to imagine during a Communion service, has been compared both in its own time and today to “a work of religion,” as her son and biographer put it. The hugely popular stage adaptations it inspired likewise featured overtly religious elements and were compared to churchgoing. But that spiritual and quasi-liturgical dimension exists in a peculiar juxtaposition with another of its features, one that also mattered enormously to Stowe: the novel’s reliance on documentable fact. At pains to show that she was telling the simple truth about slavery, Stowe published a companion volume, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that compiled a large body of news reports and other substantiating documents. If it seems odd that a literary work could at once be sentimental and religious yet also framed as a kind of journalism, claiming authority from both Scripture and the ephemeral writings of the passing scene, this paper will suggest that these contrasting spiritual and factual impulses were, for Stowe, essentially one and the same. In an era when traditional biblical authority was newly in question and, at the same time, a revolution in publishing and news reporting was producing massive amounts of cheap and disposable print, Stowe was one of a number of American writers looking for new ways to synthesize these two kinds of text, infusing literature with both the timeless significance of the one and the vivid immediacy of the other.
ER  -

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan. Fighting Heresy with Facts : The Spiritual Journalism of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In \textit{In/Outside the Frame Conference, 15th International Cultural Studies Conference \&{} 4th International Conference on Linguistics and Language Teaching and Learning, 5th-6th November 2020, University of Pardubice, Pardubice}. 2020.

Detailed Information on Publication Record