This study combines theoretical approaches of cognitive anthropology cultural narratology and
cultural formalism to disclose the powerful impact of narrative forms on cultural processes of
meaning-making. As an illustration of how forms shape and alter cultural worldviews in the
contact zone the work of American missionary and writer Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015) serves as
a case study. Despite her wide influence on American Protestant communities as a popular
speaker and author of over thirty books Elliot's role as a key figure in shaping narratives of
redemption in America remains largely unacknowledged in literary and cultural
scholarship.Focusing on fourteen of Elliot's published works from her early bestseller Through
Gates of Splendor (1957) to her modern essay collection Secure in the Everlasting Arms (2002)
this study investigates the texts' negotiations of redemptive modes and models witnessing an
increasing turn away from whole forms. Thereby the analysis uncoversthe role of formal
explorations as a means to grapple with and interpret discomforting experiences of the contact
zone that call into question redemptive plots. Demonstrating the specific affordances and
constraints in Elliot's work of hagiographic ethnographic fictive biographic geopious and
essayistic forms to write life in a redemptive way this monograph promises a deeper
understanding of narrative repertoires of redemption and their cultural work through form.
CONTENTS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
................................................................... ix LIST OF SHORT TITLES
......................................................................................... xii
I. INTRODUCTION: ELISABETH ELLIOT AND THE STUDY OF CULTURE .................11. Relevancy of
Elisabeth Elliot's Writing for the Study of Culture:Current State of Research and Historical
Contextualization .........................22. Concepts of the Contact Zone: Cultural Models
and Narrative Modes ...... 103. Life Writing: Genre or Practice?
................................................................. 124. Premises Methodology
and Structure........................................................ 16 II. THE CULTURAL WORK
OF NARRATIVE FORM IN LIFE WRITING .................... 201. The Cognitive Impact on Cultural
Formation ............................................. 201.1 Cognitive Models of Culture:
Conceptualizationand Developments in Anthropology
................................................... 201.2 Connectionism: Centrifugal and
Centripetal Tendenciesof Cultural Properties
.......................................................................... 241.3 Cognitive
Processes of Meaning-Making: Intramental Translation Mediating Structures and
Compartmentalization .............................. 272. Cultural Meaning-Making in American
Life Narratives ............................. 352.1 Cultural Ways of Worldmaking and Narrative
Communities ............. 352.2 The Redemptive Self: Prominent American Narrative Modesand
Cultural Models of Life Writing .................................................. 413. The
Cultural Work of Form in Life Writing ................................................ 443.1
Cultural Formalist Approaches to Textual Forms of Life Writing ...... 443.2 From Hagiographic
to Essayistic Forms: InvestigatingAffordances and Constraints of Narrative Formsfor their
Cultural Work in Life Writing .............................................. 47 III.
HAGIOGRAPHIC DESIGN: REDEMPTIVE SELVESIN THROUGH GATES OF SPLENDOR (1957)
..................................................... 491. From Martyr Passion to Legend: Af
