Bodies of life: Shaker literacies and literature

Abstract

I examine the roles of literacy and literature among the Shakers from the opening of Mother Ann Lee\u27s testimony in 1780 through the early twentieth century to propose that the sect persistently resisted and revised the world\u27s literacies. I assert that multiple kinds of reading and writing acts reinforce the beliefs of individuals and the church as a whole, and I argue that the increase in literary acts which appear to contribute to individualism and fragmentation of the institution actually allows Believers to revise their theology so that they see their sect as continuing to grow rather than declining. In Chapter I, Varieties of Literary Experiences, I chronologically survey shifts in the sect\u27s literary endeavors. In Chapter II, Letters, Spirits and Bodies, I define the Shakers\u27 spiritual literacies by exploring relationships between bodily behaviors such as celibacy, theology of an embodied spirit, and literary acts, beginning with examples of Lee recorded in the biographical 1816 Testimonies. Chapters III-VII are case studies of doctrinal treatises, histories, biographies, autobiographies and elegies. In Handbooks to Spiritual Literacies, I analyze Richard McNemar\u27s Kentucky Revival and John Dunlavy\u27s Manifesto to argue that Lee emerges as an absent presence which shapes the writers\u27 faith-strengthening polemical works. In Chapter IV I argue that editors\u27 construction of the 1816 Testimonies and Believers\u27 interpretations of Lee imagery within it depend upon their knowledge of popular texts such as John Bunyan\u27s Pilgrim\u27s Progress and Susanna Rowson\u27s Charlotte Temple. Lee imagery and racial concerns inform the literacies of African-American Rebecca Jackson and her editor Alonzo Hollister, whose autobiographical writings are the focus of Chapter V. In Chapter VI I argue that the Canterbury, New Hampshire, Obituary Journal and elegies within it reflect an increasing sense of individualism and loss as they preserve Shaker literacies. Finally, I demonstrate how Anna White and Leila Taylor, in Shakerism; Its Meaning and Message (1904), revise the stories of Lee\u27s literacy and Shaker educational practices to sketch the sect as progressive. Yet like many prior Believers, they underscore the presence of a spirit which breathes life into their literacies and literature