3. The Irony and Mimicry of William Apess

Indian Nation ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 41-59
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Max Perry Mueller

This chapter examines the Book of Mormon's racial theology of “white universalism.” It explores the supposed pre-Columbian history that the Book of Mormon contains, notably the origins of Native Americans as a remnant of Israelites called the “Lamanites.” It also explores the future that the Book of Mormon prophesies in which the Lamanites unify with believing “Gentiles” to become one “white and a delightsome” people and together build a New Jerusalem in America before Christ’s return. The chapter also includes an examination of the Book of Mormon prophet, “Samuel, the Lamanite.” Samuel’s case, along with other marginalized early American religious leaders like William Apess and Jerana Lee, shows that non-white Americans have a “privileged sight” onto America and America’s religious communities that fail to live up to their own ideals of inclusion and equality. The views of marginalized figures are thus essential for an accurate accounting of America’s past.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 582-587
Author(s):  
Philip F. Gura
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-215
Author(s):  
Joshua David Bellin
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
John Mac Kilgore

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1841. While this statement may read like an innocuous truism today, the claim would have been controversial in the antebellum United States when enthusiasm was a hotly contested term associated with religious fanaticism and poetic inspiration, revolutionary politics and imaginative excess. In analyzing the language of enthusiasm in philosophy, religion, politics, and literature, John Mac Kilgore uncovers a tradition of enthusiasm linked to a politics of emancipation. The dissenting voices chronicled here fought against what they viewed as tyranny while using their writings to forge international or antinationalistic political affiliations. Pushing his analysis across national boundaries, Kilgore contends that American enthusiastic literature, unlike the era’s concurrent sentimental counterpart, stressed democratic resistance over domestic reform as it navigated the global political sphere. By analyzing a range of canonical American authors—including William Apess, Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman—Kilgore places their works in context with the causes, wars, and revolutions that directly or indirectly engendered them. In doing so, he makes a unique and compelling case for enthusiasm’s centrality in the shaping of American literary history.


1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 442
Author(s):  
Ann Marie Plane ◽  
William Apess ◽  
William Apess. A. Pequot ◽  
Barry O'Connell ◽  
Jack Campisi
Keyword(s):  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document