The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789-1880University of North Carolina Press, 2004 - 336 páginas The recent success of the Left Behind book series, which sold over 50 million books, points to an enormous readership of evangelical Christian literature that has not gone unnoticed by the mainstream publishing world. But this is not a recent phenomenon; the evangelical publishing community has been growing for more than two hundred years. Candy Gunther Brown explores the roots of this far-flung conglomeration of writers, publishers, and readers, from the founding of the Methodist Book Concern in 1789 to the 1880 publication of the runaway best-seller Ben-Hur. Brown shows how this distinct print community used the Word of the Bible and printed words of their own to pursue a paradoxical mission: purity from and a transformative presence in the secular world. Although scholars usually claim that religious publishing fell prey to the secularizing engines of commodification, Brown argues that evangelicals knew what they were doing by adopting a range of strategies, including the use of popular narratives and beautiful packaging. An informal canon of texts emerged in the nineteenth century, consisting of sermons, histories, memoirs, novels, gift books, Sunday school libraries, periodicals, and hymnals. Looking beyond the uses of texts in religious conversion, Brown examines how textual practices have transmitted cultural values both within evangelical communities and across a larger American cultural milieu. An epilogue conveys crucial insights into twenty-first-century ties between religion and the media. |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in ... Candy Gunther Brown Vista previa limitada - 2004 |
The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in ... Candy Gunther Brown Sin vista previa disponible - 2005 |
Términos y frases comunes
ABPS advertisement African American American Antiquarian Society Annual ASSU authors Baptist Ben-Hur Bible Book Concern Book Publishing book trades Boston Calvinistic camp meeting century Christ Christian Advocate Christian Recorder clerical collections Congregationalist congregations doctrine Edited editors Elizabeth Prentiss evan evangelical canon evangelical print culture evangelical publishers experiences fiction gelical genres gospel Harper Harriet Beecher Stowe Henry McNeal Turner History Holy Spirit Hymn Book hymn canon hymnals Hymnody Hymnology hymns influence Library literary literature Magazine memoirs Methodist Episcopal Church midcentury Missionary narrative nineteenth nineteenth-century evangelicals nondenominational papers participants Philadelphia Piers Plowman pilgrim community pilgrimage practices Prentiss Presbyterian priesthood print market publications readers reading Religion religious periodicals Revival Robert Carter Sabbath sacred sacred language sanctified secular selected shared singing social Society Songs Southern Stepping Heavenward story Sunday school Tebbel texts textual community textually defined theological tion Tract trade publishers volume Word worship writing York