Table of Contents

Introduction
Part One: Foundations and Paradoxes in Mormon Cultural Origins
1: The Iron Rod and the Liahona: Authority and Radical Freedom
2: The Endless Quest and Perfect Knowledge: Searching and Certainty
3: Everlasting Burnings and Cinder Blocks: The Sacred and the Banal
4: Peculiar People and Loneliness at the Top: Election and Exile
Part Two: The Varieties of Mormon Cultural Expression
Beginnings (1830-1890): The Dancing Puritans
5: "The Glory of God is Intelligence": Mormons and the Life of the Mind
6: "Zion Shall be Built": Architecture and City Planning
7: "No Music in Hell": Music and Dance
8: "On a Cannibal Island": Theater
9: "Novels Rather than Nothing": Literature
10: "A Goodly Portion of Painter and Artists": The Visual Arts
A Moveable Zion (1890-present): Pioneer Nostalgia and Beyond the American Religion
11: "Foment in the Pot": The Life of the Mind - Part 2
12: "A Uniform Look for the Church": Architecture - Part 2
13: "No Tabernacle Choir on Broadway": Music and Dance - Part 2
14: "Cinema as Sacrament": Theater and Film - Part 2
15: "To the Fringes of Faith": Literature - Part 2

About the Author

Terryl L. Givens is Professor of Literature and Religion and Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English, University of Richmond. His books on Mormonism and American religious culture include The Latter-Day Saint Experience in America, By the Hand of Mormon, and Viper on the Hearth.

Reviews

"Terry L. Givens takes readers on a fascinating tour of the remarkable achievements of Mormon culture; its distinctive contributions to art, literature, music, theater, science, and to the life of the mind. Eventually, one realizes that this is not only a book about Mormon culture, but that it makes a substantial contribution to that culture." --Rodney Stark, author of The Rise of Mormonism
"Terryl Givens provides an elegant introduction to some of the central tenets, practices, and psychic investments of the Mormon faith. Linking Mormon teachings about agency, authority, salvation, and revelation to broader impulses in Christian and American theology and aesthetics, Givens comprehensively explores both the distinctiveness of Mormon cultural production and its continuities with wider religious currents. He describes the contradictions and
persistent problems that arise, as they do in all faiths, within the lived experience of Mormonism. An outstanding work of intellectual and cultural studies, People of Paradox represents a creative and
singular contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on the Mormon tradition." --Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, author of Religion and Society in Frontier California
"Givens's proposal that Mormon belief be conceived as a series of paradoxes rather than a set of fixed principles is one of the most significant advances in Mormon thought in a generation. It puts Mormon culture in a brilliant new light. Moreover, by displacing the standard themes from their usual position at center stage and exploring Mormon cultural expression instead, he gives us a fresh, new history of the Latter-day Saints. This book is filled with
treasures." --Richard Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling
"People of Paradox confirms Terryl Givens's status, if it was ever in question, as the leading mid-career scholar of Mormonism. People of Paradox will likely, for a generation or more, be the statement on Mormon culture with which scholars must wrestle. This well-researched cultural history succeeds brilliantly in what it sets out to do-synthetically identify and explain fundamental issues and trends within Mormon culture. It is even more
exceptional as cultural criticism. No summary can adequately convey the elegance of Givens's prose or the subtlety and profundity of his insights. The book is a superb historical introduction and agenda-setting
conceptualization of Mormon culture."--Western Historical Quarterly
"This is an impressive work of synthesis that engages a broad secondary literature in discussing each aspect of the Mormon intellectual and artistic heritage. While other scholars have produced excellent studies treating Mormon literature or music or visual arts, Givens is the first to offer a comprehensive survey of key aspects of Latter-day Saint cultural life across the full span of Mormon history. ...The breadth of its coverage, the insightfulness of many
of its observations, and the effective use it makes of paradox to provide a richly textured portrait of Mormon intellectual and artistic life make it a solid contribution to the growing field of Mormon
studies. It deserves to be widely read and discussed, and its superior literary style insures that enjoyment as well as insight will repay its readers." --American Historical Review
"Givens has accomplished something quite special with this masterful study of Mormon cultural expression: in deriving his discussion of Mormon culture from details of Mormon theology, he suggests a union of the practical and theoretical elements of religious life with a sincerity and seamlessness rarely achieved in academic study." --Choice
"Givens' People of Paradox goes a long way towards establishing the richness of the Mormon tradition."--Jared Hickman, Book & Culture