“Deliberate disorientation” is a phrase Neylan McBaine uses to describe her work with The Mormon Women Project. She achieves this state, as mentioned in Part I of her interview, by choosing stories that focus on “women who prioritize the gospel and yet still make unique and intriguing choices about how to maximize their [...]

These days Mormons can’t seem to get off the op-ed page. As folks who share the faith of Mitt Romney, are subjects of a Tony Award winning musical, and an assertive ad campaign us Mormon are everywhere–and so are stereotypes about us. In a recent interview on Fresh Air with Terri Gross talked with a [...]

In counterpoint to Andrew Hall’s now 12-year-old annual review of Mormon Literature[fn1] (the first part of the latest edition appeared last week), I thought it might give some perspective to look at what Mormon Literature looked like 100 years ago. Boy have we come a long way!!
Unfortunately, I was only able to look at the [...]

My previous “Lit Crit Sermons” have been from sources that generally took a positive view of literature, seeing the role of the author or poet as an important and divinely inspired one. That view is, unfortunately, not universal among past General Authorities of the Church and those who wrote in LDS-oriented magazines. In fact, Church [...]

This is, as far as I can tell, either the first or second published discussion of literature in a Mormon source (an earlier article discussed writing letters). As might be expected from a Mormon periodical in 1832, Phelps’ arguments are very focused on the Bible as an inspired document, and one that is clearly superior [...]

As I’ve looked at 19th century newspapers and other documents, I’ve come across literary works or references to literary works that I didn’t know about, and that, apparently, are unknown among those of us interested in Mormon literature. Yesterday, I discovered another.

Looking at early Mormon poetry through the Mormon trek, I realized this week that just a few poets wrote a large portion (perhaps even a majority) of the poetry published in Mormon periodicals. Most LDS Church members recognize three of these poets: Eliza R. Snow, Parley P. Pratt, and William Wines Phelps. The other two, [...]

In my searches through early Mormon literature, I recently came across a somewhat unusual item: a  2-canto poem from 1841, titled The Latter-day Saints by “Omer, author of Eliza or the Broken Vow.” The unusual part is not the poem or its title, but rather the reference to the earlier work, which could, if found, [...]