We Too Must Write Bibles : The Search for American Prophets and
Sacred Scriptures in the EarIy United States

p 2021

We Too Must Write Bibles : The Search for American Prophets and Sacred Scriptures in the EarIy United States

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan

Basic information

Original name

We Too Must Write Bibles : The Search for American Prophets and Sacred Scriptures in the EarIy United States

Authors

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan

Edition

Invited public lecture, lnstitute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava, 2021

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Vyžádané přednášky

Field of Study

60206 Specific literatures

Country of publisher

Czech Republic

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

Organization unit

Faculty of Arts

Keywords in English

American literature; American culture; nineteenth century; Bible; parascripture; early journalism

Abstract

V originále

In the tumultuous decades of rapid expansion and change before the Civil War, Americans confronted a cluster of overlapping crises whose common theme was the difficulty of finding authority in written texts. Arrayed around this issue were several disruptive developments: rising challenges to the traditional authority of the Bible; persistent worries over America's lack of a "national literature" and an independent cultural identity; the slavery crisis; acrimony over clashing interpretations of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, especially as these "parascriptures" gradually became a kind of quasi-sacred secular canon; and, from the opposite direction, the rapid emergence of "mass media" in the modern sense, a new, industrial-scale print culture that put a premium on information as remote as could be from the sacred -- disposable, mass-produced "news," immediate and dispensed in huge quantities, but often unreliable and meant only for the day or hour. This presentation identifies key features of the writings, careers and cultural politics of several prominent figures as responses to these combined challenges. In their varied attempts to vindicate the sacred and to merge the timeless with the urgent present, Joseph Smith, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, Abraham Lincoln, and other religious and political leaders and men and women of letters helped define American literary culture as an ongoing quest for what Emerson called "a perpetual scripture."

Links

MUNI/A/1446/2020, interní kód MU

Name: Paradigms, strategies and developments - Anglophone literary and cultural studies

Investor: Masaryk University

Citovat

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan. We Too Must Write Bibles : The Search for American Prophets and Sacred Scriptures in the EarIy United States. In Invited public lecture, lnstitute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava. 2021.

@misc{1821891,
   author = {Smith, Jeffrey Alan},
   booktitle = {Invited public lecture, lnstitute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava},
   keywords = {American literature; American culture; nineteenth century; Bible; parascripture; early journalism},
   language = {eng},
   title = {We Too Must Write Bibles : The Search for American Prophets and Sacred Scriptures in the EarIy United States},
   year = {2021}
}

TY  - SLIDE
ID  - 1821891
AU  - Smith, Jeffrey Alan
PY  - 2021
TI  - We Too Must Write Bibles : The Search for American Prophets and Sacred Scriptures in the EarIy United States
KW  - American literature
KW  - American culture
KW  - nineteenth century
KW  - Bible
KW  - parascripture
KW  - early journalism
N2  - In the tumultuous decades of rapid expansion and change before the Civil War, Americans confronted a cluster of overlapping crises whose common theme was the difficulty of finding authority in written texts. Arrayed around this issue were several disruptive developments: rising challenges to the traditional authority of the Bible; persistent worries over America's lack of a "national literature" and an independent cultural identity; the slavery crisis; acrimony over clashing interpretations of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, especially as these "parascriptures" gradually became a kind of quasi-sacred secular canon; and, from the opposite direction, the rapid emergence of "mass media" in the modern sense, a new, industrial-scale print culture that put a premium on information as remote as could be from the sacred -- disposable, mass-produced "news," immediate and dispensed in huge quantities, but often unreliable and meant only for the day or hour. This presentation identifies key features of the writings, careers and cultural politics of several prominent figures as responses to these combined challenges. In their varied attempts to vindicate the sacred and to merge the timeless with the urgent present, Joseph Smith, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, Abraham Lincoln, and other religious and political leaders and men and women of letters helped define American literary culture as an ongoing quest for what Emerson called "a perpetual scripture."
ER  -

SMITH, Jeffrey Alan. We Too Must Write Bibles : The Search for American Prophets and Sacred Scriptures in the EarIy United States. In \textit{Invited public lecture, lnstitute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philosophy and Science, Silesian University in Opava}. 2021.

Detailed Information on Publication Record