Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
[Introduction To] The Viper On The Hearth: Mormons, Myths, And The Construction Of Heresy, Terryl Givens
[Introduction To] The Viper On The Hearth: Mormons, Myths, And The Construction Of Heresy, Terryl Givens
Bookshelf
Nineteenth-century American writers frequently cast the Mormon as a stock villain in such fictional genres as mysteries, westerns, and popular romances. The Mormons were depicted as a violent and perverse people--the "viper on the hearth"--who sought to violate the domestic sphere of the mainstream. While other critics have mined the socio-political sources of anti-Mormonism, Givens is the first to reveal how popular fiction, in its attempt to deal with the sources and nature of this conflict, constructed an image of the Mormon as a religious and social "Other."