Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Editor's Preface, Alison Wood

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

When writing of her friendship with Henry James, Edith Wharton described their relationship as "an atmosphere of the rarest understanding, the richest and most varied mental comradeship." The friendship began in 1900, when Wharton sent James a brief note congratulating him on a recent publication. They struck up a correspondence, one chat lasted nearly fifteen years. Wharton would lacer reflect on the relationship in her autobiography, calling it "a real marriage of true minds," built upon a shared love of writing and reading. This relationship is documented in large part because of their vast correspondence, as the two authors shared …

President's Message, John W. Welch

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Would you like to catch a glimpse of what is going on around the Foundation these days? We can hardly run fast enough to keep up with it all! Letters this week have been running between 125 and 140 per day! You can imagine the rest. But it's rewarding and gratifying to the dozens of volunteers on this end. We trust that it's also interesting and useful to you on your end.

Letters To And From Julian The Apostate, Stacey Kaliabakos

Parnassus: Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Alternation Of Prepositions In Arabic Among Grammarians And Its Impact On The Interpretation Of Meaning, Ahmad Tamtami

Al Jinan الجنان

This research deals with the topic of the letters of meanings and their effect on the interpretation of the Qur’anic verses, and presents applied examples from the book “Facilitating Tafsir” by Qutb Atfayesh. The research problem: what are the doctrines of grammarians in the rotation of letters, and what is the opinion that the pole went to by presenting applied models from his book, Facilitation of Interpretation. The research aims to explain Qutb’s opinion on the issue of rotation of letters, while presenting various applied models from the book Facilitation of Tafsir. The approach used in this research is a …

Mom-In-Chief: The Financial And Emotional Demands Of Motherhood On Housewives Of Servicemen During World War Ii, Abigail Caldwell

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This essay analyzes letters by white, American stay-at-home mothers with husbands in the service during World War II. It uses articles published during the war to compare the expectations for moms to their lived experiences and explores how motherhood shaped their wartime lives. Many scholars have studied women during WWII, but most focus on those who entered the work force. This essay takes a closer look at the women who stayed home with their children and what that looked like compared to the media’s portrayals. The mothers’ letters capture the financial and emotional hardships caused by war, separation, motherhood, and …

Letter To Editor, Arnold E. Sikkema

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Dorothy Wordsworth’S Travel Writings: A Digital Critical Edition, Nicholas Mason

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Thanks to the MEG award we received in 2014-15, my colleague Paul Westover and I have been able to mentor six outstanding BYU students in archival research and scholarly editing and have made significant progress toward the publication of a major new critical edition of the works of the nineteenth-century poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth.

(Un)Documented, A Narrative Of M— In Letters To/From Us Institutions, Randy Gonzales

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Government documents like military and civil service personnel files are excellent sources of information for life writers, but the prioritization of information obscures features of the source document, often stripping genre, style, tone, and voice from content. This composition seeks to tell a compelling story, while maintaining features of the documents in the military and civil service files of M—, a Filipino immigrant who joined the US Navy in 1908. The source documents, mostly letters, are selected, edited, condensed, and annotated to tell a story about migration, labor, and citizenship. The documents highlight the relationship between record keeping and human …

A Missionary's Story: The Letters And Journals Of Adolf Haag, Mormon Missionary To Switzerland And Palestine, 1892, Bridget Edwards

BYU Studies Quarterly

Larry W. Draper and Kent P. Jackson, eds., A Missionary’s Story: The Letters and Journals of Adolf Haag, Mormon Missionary to Switzerland and Palestine, 1892 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 2015)

Women's Values Speaking Between Their Words: Women's Correspondence In Early Nineteenth Century America, Rachel Mahrt Degn

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

In this paper I examine folklore gathered from women’s letters circa 1830 to see what they reveal about how women used correspondence to reinforce and express their values. Through some traditional expressions of folklore (categorized as customary, oral, material, and belief) women demonstrate their values: interpersonal connection and duty.

Public Justice And Personal Liberty: Variety And Linguistic Skill In The Letters Of Mary Fisher, Althea Stewart

Quaker Studies

This essay concerns the use of language in letters by Mary Fisher, the seventeenth-century Quaker missionary. It shows how she adapts her exegetical discourse to suit her readers, and uses it for more than selfjustification. Her first letter, written from York prison is shown to be influenced by the work of Elizabeth Hooton. It is also used as an example of a letter containing a complex and subtle biblical subtext. This technique gave these early Quaker women the confidence to write. Both Fisher and Hooton started writing to draw attention to injustice. Hooton continued to do this throughout her life; …

Voltaire's Convincement, Raymond Ayoub

Quaker Studies

The aim of this essay is to trace the evolution of Voltaire's perspective toward Quakers and Quakerism during the course of his life. The record begins when in 1726 he was forced into exile and chose to go to England. In the course of his three-year stay there, he wrote letters to his friend-letters which were published in 1733 in English under the title 'Letters Concerning the English Nation' and in French with the title 'Lettres Philosophiques'. Four of the 25 letters are devoted to Quakerism. We endeavour to depict, through his writing, Voltaire's changing attitude toward Quakerism from one …

In Their Hands: Students Editing Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Letters, Thomas Mclean

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

This article describes an honours-year class conducted in 2013 at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Students transcribed, annotated and wrote essays about a little-known New Zealand collection of unpublished letters written by leading British women writers of the Romantic era. Their research was then collected and published as a book entitled "In Her Hand: Letters of Romantic-Era British Women Writers in New Zealand Collections." The success of this course suggests the benefits of allowing students the opportunity to undertake original archival research and serves as a reminder that rich archival collections are found all over the world.

Political Agendas In The Letters Of Hildegard Of Bingen, Anna Sweeney

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Hildegard of Bingen is mentioned only briefly in historical accounts of musicology, religious philosophy, and biographical studies of various monarchs from the twelfth century; however, she played a crucial role in maintaining the Catholic Church's influence as a political institution. In her correspondences, Bingen used enormous amounts of prophetic language to refer to many current events that were happening throughout Western Europe. In her letters to churchmen, bishops, popes and kings, she counseled against rampant heresies and political behavior contradicting the will of the Church. The sickly tenth daughter of a German aristocratic family, Hildegard was born 44 years after …

The 1890s Mormon Culture Of Letters And The Post-Manifesto Marriage Crisis: A New Approach To Home Literature, Lisa Olsen Tait

BYU Studies Quarterly

To please while we teach important lessons, to implant solid principles of truth and nobility while chaining the minds and attentions with our seemingly “light literature;” these are some of our aims.

—Susa Young Gates

Proust’S Innovative Vision Of Literature As Seen Through His Correspondence, Pascal Ifri

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Marcel Proust’s monumental correspondence is filled with information about the man Marcel Proust and his daily life, but reveals very little about his ideas on art and literature or about the novel that consumed his life, A la recherche du temps perdu. Most of his letters paint an extremely polite and even obsequious man overly concerned with pleasing his correspondents or with organizing his social life while others provide information about his personal life. When he mentions his writing, it is usually in connection with practical questions or information he is seeking. Very rarely does he discuss his novel …

A Question On My Mind: Robert Mccorkle's 1844 Letter To Joseph Smith, Hal R. Boyd, Susan E. Black

BYU Studies Quarterly

Robert McCorkle (1807–1873) was one of many Americans curious about Mormonism. In 1844 he visited Nauvoo, Illinois, then headquarters of the Latter-day Saints. He hoped to obtain an audience with Joseph Smith but was able only to hear Smith speak at public meetings. When he returned to his home in Tennessee, he wrote to Smith, asking questions and describing his willingness to relocate to Nauvoo if Smith could prove that he was a true prophet. Interestingly, McCorkle wrote much of his letter in rhymed verse and hoped that Joseph Smith would reply in verse. It does not appear that Smith …

Letters Of Swiss Immigrants From New Bern, 1710 -1711, Vincent H. Todd, Translator, Hedwig Rappolt, Translator

Swiss American Historical Society Review

HANS RUEGSEGGER: I am in hopes that within a year I'll have over 100 head of horses, cattle, and pigs.

Next to my friendly greetings I report to you that I and my household arrived in Carolina safe and sound, and luckily at that, but on the 26th of Hornung [February] my son HanB died with great longing for the Lord Jesus. However on the last of Haying-Month [July] 1710, my daughter gave birth to a beautiful young son. We are on truly good and fat land; I am in hopes that within the year I'll have over 100 head …

Letters On Mormon Polygamy And Progeny: Eliza R. Snow And Martin Luther Holbrook, 1866–1869, Jill Mulvay Derr, Matthew J. Grow

BYU Studies Quarterly

Almost from their inception, cinematic media and technologies have been accepted and appropriated with surprising enthusiasm by Iranians and Mormons alike. Both cultures appear to have embraced cinema as a natural outgrowth of their lively and longstanding appreciation for art and family-oriented entertainment in general. The author finds that the artistic progress and quality of Mormon cinema as of 2009 has thus far, with few exceptions, fallen short of its potential, while Iranian film artists have made an astonishing number of spiritually profound, culturally insightful, and cinematically sophisticated films despite having formidable obstacles. The author encourages Mormon filmmakers to attain …

Modiano And Sebald: Walking In Another's Footsteps , Steven Ungar

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article studies Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder (1997) and W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz (2000) in conjunction with a contemporary literature of diaspora grounded in the extended aftermath of World War II. Both texts straddle fiction and testimonial accounts such as memoirs, letters, and video/audio recordings. In addition, both raise questions with which traditional historians seldom contend, even when they group these questions under the category of memory. What understanding of the recent past might these two narratives promote? What do they imply—individually or as a set—concerning the nature and function of the historical subjectivity that literature can convey? Each in its …

Introduction: Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder, Richard J. Golsan, Lynn A. Higgins

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

After establishing a reputation as a literary enfant terrible in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Patrick Modiano is now firmly ensconced as a Grand Old Man (perhaps the Grand Old Man) of French letters and arguably as France's greatest living novelist…

Heloise And Abelard Today: A Student Response Approach, Carol Breslin, Donald F. Duclow

Quidditas

The story of Heloise and Abelard has aged remarkably well. We teach their “Personal Letters” and Abelard’s Historia calamitatum in two undergraduate courses. This article discusses an informal writing assignment, in which our students adopt the persona of Astralabe, the son of Heloise and Abelard, and write a letter to Heloise concerning his parents’ lives and loves. Often students read the correspondence through the filter of contemporary experience. They consider Abelard’s behavior as patriarchal and boorish, and object to what they see as Heloise’s extreme humility and acceptance of the anti-feminist palaver of her day. However, when students remember and …

Experience And Enlightenment: Character Portrait In Letters Of Johann Caspar Lohbauer, Elizabeth M. Siber

Swiss American Historical Society Review

These letters of a great-great uncle of mine titled, Experience and Enlightenment: Character Portrait in Letters of Johann Caspar Lohbauer, killed in the US Civil War 1863, Published Zurich 1864, were published in book format by his family in Switzerland and were introduced with the following words:

"If we print these letters, at first to a restricted public, it is because of the distinct wish of many dear friends who had seen part of these letters, or had heard of its contents, and who by their knowledge were affected and dearly wished to know it all- a wish, which with …

The Construction Of History In The Folds Of Family History In The Novel Song Lost In West Buenos Aires By María Rosa Lojo, Zulema Moret

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The novels written by María Rosa Lojo strongly reflect a specific preoccupation with the rewriting of history from new perspectives that are related to so-called postmodernism. This is the case with Canción perdida en Buenos Aires al Oeste (1987). This work attempts to articulate a reading of the "private" at a crossroads with the history of the country and of other countries (Argentina/Spain). It is a novel of exiles, from the exile of the Neira family from the Franco dictatorship in the forties to the particular exiles of each family member during the seventies and eighties in Argentina. From the …

“Give Up All And Follow Your Lord”: Testimony And Exhortation In Early Mormon Women's Letters, 1831–1839, Janiece Johnson

BYU Studies Quarterly

Women composed a significant portion of the early converts who would follow Joseph Smith over hundreds of miles and through the fires of persecution. Lucy Mack Smith, Rebecca Williams, Phebe Peck, and Melissa Dodge represent well the dedication and testimony of such early Latter-day Saint women. Despite separation from loved ones and the dangers and difficulties they would face as Church members, religion was the guiding factor in their lives. These women testified of the value of their experiences and exhorted others to "give up all and follow your Lord" regardless of the trials that were required of them.

Shaping The Stones: Lorenzo Snow's Letters To Priesthood Leaders Of The London Conference, November 1842, Andrew H. Hedges, Jay G. Burrup

BYU Studies Quarterly

On the afternoon of Sunday, July 23, 1837, in Preston's Vauxhall Chapel, Heber C. Kimball preached the first Latter-day Saint sermon to be delivered in England. Heber presided over England's first baptisms one week later, after which he and his six companions parted company to cover more territory. People flocked to hear the missionaries' message, and by the time Elder Kimball left England nine months later, over fifteen hundred people had been baptized in and around Preston. A more fertile land for missionary work could hardly be imagined.

Letters Of Comment, Tony West, Kelly Searsmith

The Mythic Circle

No abstract provided.

The Josiah Stowell Jr.–John S. Fullmer Correspondence, Mark Ashurst-Mcgee

BYU Studies Quarterly

Published here for the first time is a strong letter from one of Joseph Smith's early acquaintances, an independent witness who substantiates the youthful Prophet's good character.

Letters Of A Missionary Apostle To His Wife: Brigham Young To Mary Ann Angell Young, 1839-1841, Ronald O. Barney

BYU Studies Quarterly

The Quorum of the Twelve's mission to the British Isles impacted not only the Church, but also the personal lives of the missionaries. Brigham Young creates a tender personal portrait in nine never-before-published letters to his wife.

Playing The Waiting Game: The Life And Letters Of Elizabeth Wolley, Elizabeth Mccutcheon

Quidditas

Almost fifty years ago Wallace Notestein, an English historian, commented that while both the men and the women of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England remain "strangers" and “shadowy figures” to us, the women are “much more shadowy.” Pointing out that “Our knowledge of women comes largely from the incidental mention of them by men who seldom took pains to characterize and individualize them,” he insisted that “It is as individuals that we must know them, if we are to understand them as members of a sex.” Obviously a great deal has changed for the better. We know much more about the …