Esta dissertação analisa a representação das comunidades de descendentes de imigrantes alemães no Rio Grande do Sul, durante o período do Estado Novo, sob a ótica de duas obras literárias de autores gaúchos, escritas nesse período: Um rio imita o Reno, de Vianna Moog, publicada em 1939, e Longe do Reno – Uma resposta a Vianna Moog, de Bayard Mércio, publicada em 1940. É realizada uma discussão sobre a forma como esses imigrantes eram percebidos em sua relação com a sociedade brasileira, ou seja, se havia uma integração desses grupos na cultura do país e na defesa dos interesses nacionais, ou se eles ainda permaneciam vivendo a cultura de seus antepassados e mantendo relações com a política alemã. / This dissertation examines the representation of communities of German immigrant descendants in Rio Grande do Sul, during the Estado Novo, from the perspective of two literary works written by authors from this state, during the period: Um rio imita o Reno (“A river imitates the Reno”), by Vianna Moog, published in 1939, and Longe do Reno – uma resposta a Vianna Moog (“Far from Reno – an answer to Vianna Moog”), by Bayard Mércio, published in 1940. Is held a discussion about how these immigrants were perceived in their relationship with Brazilian society; in other words, whether there was an integration of these groups into the culture of the country and in the defense of national interests, or if they were still living the culture of their ancestors and maintaining relationships with German politics.

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The three papers included in this thesis reflect my development as a graduate student during the course of my master's program at Brigham Young Universtiy. I came to Brigham Young University interested in creative writing and developed a love for research and criticism. My work in nineteenth century American literature led to the first two papers. Both deal with literary history, the first narrow in scope, devoted to a study of the significance of a single play, the second broad in scope, devoted to a study of the unifying thread of anti-sentimentalism in the writings of the major American realists. These papers reflect both my research in and commitment to American literary criticism. My third paper is a study of the significance of violence in the poetry of Clinton F. Larson. I have attempted to be objective and honest in my assessment of Dr. Larson's poetry. My thesis on his poetry is entirely my own. To my knowledge this is a first: a first study of Dr. Larson's poetry, and a first paper on his work ever included in a master's thesis. I am happy to have the privilege of opening up this area of investigation. It is my hope that this study will stimulate further discussion of his work.

My dissertation, “Africans, Cherokees, and the ABCFM Missionaries in the Nineteenth Century: An Unusual Story of Redemption,” assesses the experience of American missionaries in the Cherokee nation and in Western Africa during the nineteenth century. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), founded in 1810, was the first successful foreign missionary society in the U.S., and its campaign among the Cherokees served as springboard for its activities in “Western Africa”—Liberia, Ivory Coast, Gabon, and South Africa. Although the Cherokees and the West Africans were two different peoples, the ABCFM used the same method to Christianize them: the Lancasterian method with which the missionaries planned to “civilize” the Cherokees and West Africans before Christianizing them. Scholars such as William McLoughlin and Theda Purdue studied the missionary perspective and the Cherokee perspective as separate entities and convincingly maintained that the Cherokees embraced the ABCFM’s civilization and Christianization program partly to relieve the pressures on their lands and partly to adapt to the cultural pressures of their times. However, as my dissertation argues, the conversion story of the Cherokees takes a different turn if told simultaneously from the missionary and the Cherokee perspectives. Regarding the West African experience, authors such as Lamin Sanneh and Richard Gray have recently exposed the missionary and African sides of the stories with new questions that had been waiting to be asked for a long time. My dissertation, taking a unique comparative perspective, reveals first that West Africans did not face the same pressures as those faced by the Cherokees, yet, they still embraced the ABCFM’s civilization and Christianization program, though with a lesser sense of urgency and with more assertiveness than did the Cherokees despite the white missionaries’ racism. More importantly, by way of a method I call parallel agency, my dissertation offers a revisionist interpretation of the history of missions, which has traditionally emphasized the power of the white missionaries by calling into question the very assumption that the white missionaries had significantly more power than did their Cherokee and African converts.

My paper examines the ethics of representing Mormons in serious American fiction, viewed through two primary texts, Bayard Taylor's nineteenth-century dramatic poem The Prophet and Maureen Whipple's epic novel The Giant Joshua. I also briefly examine Walter Kirn's short stories “Planetarium” and “Whole Other Bodies.” Using Werner Sollors' and Matthew Frye Jacobson's writings on ethnicity as foundational, I argue in that Mormonism constitutes an ethnicity, which designation accentuates the ethical demands of those who represent the group. I also use W.J.T. Mitchell's theories of representation as the basis of my arguments of the ethics of representing ethnicity. As ethical theorists, Emmanuel Levinas and Edward Said inform the theoretical framework of my project, and I place their theories both in opposition to and harmony with each other in terms of what it means to be truly “Other” and the responsibility of those who view, represent, project, or accept otherness as essential to being. I also borrow from Wayne C. Booth, particularly in his practical application of ethics theory. I employ Terryl Givens, Michael Austin, Bruce Jorgensen, and Gideon Burton to help bring the theory into the field of Mormon studies. In applying all these theorists to Taylor and Whipple I examine Taylor's exoticizing, “Othering” Mormons, creating an “Oriental” version of the rise of Mormonism, parallel to some of his Middle Eastern travel writing. Taylor also makes the remarkable ethical step of being the first non-Mormon to “take Mormons seriously” in literary fiction. I demonstrate how his use of classical literary forms and themes moves the ethical treatment of Mormons forward in an unprecedented way. Maureen Whipple relies on some of the sensational, romantic tropes in common use, but overall she also moves forward ethical representation of Mormons in serious literature, being the best-received of “Mormondom's Lost Generation” of literary writers. In conclusion I argue that these texts, along with the more problematic Kirn stories, help create a positive ethical climate for Mormon representation.