Preface Abbreviations Introduction Varieties of Literary Experiences: An Overview of Shaker Reading and Writing Letters, Spirits, and Bodies: The Shakers' Spiritual Literacies Doctrinal Guides to Spiritual Literacies: McNemar's Kentucky Revival and Dunlavy's Manifesto (Ad)Dressing Naked Bodies with Pious Suffering: Writing and Readings of the 1816 Testimonies Reading, Writing, Race, and Mother-Imagery: The Literacies of Rebecca Cox Jackson and Alonzo Giles Hollister Preserving the Body in Poetry: The Canterbury Obituary Journal Private Acts and Possible Worlds: Shaker Literacies at the Turn of the Century Works Cited Index
Examines the evolution of the reading and writing practices of the Shakers within the context of 19th century American culture.
ETTA M. MADDEN is Assistant Professor of English at Southwest Missouri State University. She teaches courses in early American literature, from the age of European exploration to the Civil War, as well as courses on autobiographies, essays, and other prose nonfiction. Her interest in literature and culture has centered on religious writing and is beginning to encompass the literature of science.
"In this instructive volume Etta Madden probes the ways in which both reading and writing among the Shakers enriched the lives of the Believers. Her focus on the variety of literacies within the commjunity adds immensely to our understanding of the Shaker traditions of spirituality. Her recognition of the multiplicity of 'texts' among the Believers as well as the creative tensions between public and private, oral and written, male and female, physical and spiritual, enhances our knowledge and provides insight into critical pieces of Shaker literature. Madden's preoccupation with the role of the body in all this discourse ties her work to major currents of contemporary scholarship. This is a sophisticated contribution to current Shaker scholarship." Stephen J. Stein. Chancellors' Professor and Chair. Department of Religious Studies. Indiana University, Bloomington - "I have found [the book] to be highly readable, interesting, cogent, well bolstered by knowledge of relevant secondary studies, and brimming with good ideas. It ought to make significant contributions to interdisciplinry Shaker studies, to the study of American religious culture and to the study of literacy in general. Madden is one of the few people in Shaker studies so far to insist that we look at Shaker literature not just for what it can yield the historian or the scholar of religion, but also for its importance as American culture." Jean M. Humez. University of Massachusetts, Boston - "To the simple question, 'how did Shakers read and how did they understand writing,' this book returns a remarkably interesting series of answers that engage with the overlapping significance of orality and writing, authority and freedom, ecstasy and control. An important addiction to our understanding of the meaning of print, writing, and orality in 19th-century America." David D. Hall. Harvard Divinity School
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