Mormon Wasp posted back in October that Mormon studies scholar Terryl Givens has a forthcoming book title Fair as the Moon and Clear as the Sun”: A Cultural History of the Mormon People.

Now in his Times & Seasons Q&A, Givens reveals that the project will focus on how “a number of powerful tensions and paradoxes and conflicts in the intellectual universe of Joseph’s mind” influence the cultural production of later Mormons. Specifically, Give sees “in Mormon culture repeated reflections and refractions of four of these insoluble paradoxes (authority and radical freedom; perfect knowledge and Faustian insatiability; the sacred and the banal; chosenness and alienation).”

My experience is limited to Mormon literature, but at first glance, I’d say that Givens is on to something, and I eagerly await the publication of the book.

In particular it will be interesting to see which specific works Givens draws on to explore these tensions. I also wonder how up-to-date he will try and make the work. Will the recent explosion in Mormon film be represented? How about some of the fine novels and short stories that have appeared in the last 10 years?

A few titles he has to deal with:

Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series.
The Giant Joshua by Maureen Whipple.
At least one of Orson Whitney’s epic poems.
The Backslider by Levi Peterson.

A few I hope he includes:

Nothing very important and other stories by Bela Petsco.
Salavador by Margaret Young.
Angel of the Danube by Alan Rex Mitchell.
Dave Wolverton’s Runelords series.

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