![[Introduction to] The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy](https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1080/thumbnail.jpg)
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Description
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."
ISBN
9780195101836
Publication Date
1997
Publisher
Oxford University Press
City
New York
Keywords
Mormonism, Mormon church, Nineteenth-century literature, Mormons in literature
School
School of Arts and Sciences
Department
English
Disciplines
American Literature | Christian Denominations and Sects | Comparative Methodologies and Theories | History of Christianity | Nonfiction | Religion
Recommended Citation
Givens, Terryl. The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Included in
American Literature Commons, Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons, History of Christianity Commons, Nonfiction Commons
Comments
Part of the Religion in America series.
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