Strangely, before starting the process of analyzing one of the most reread chapters in the Book of Mormon in Latter-day Saint culture, I didn’t believe that a simple change in format could change the way I read 1 Nephi 1 and 2, but it does. Whether that is due impart to a familiarity of reading many books in a similar format, it’s unclear, but what I do know is that this format dramatically changed how I read certain phrases. This exercise made me reexamine how I subconsciously read the Book of Mormon in scriptural format, so I had to go reevaluate how I read it. For some reason, I tend to read The Book of Mormon in an uninterrupted motion, where I’m almost oblivious to punctuation. It feels like a constant flow of information from a stream, non-permitting of a breath of fresh air until I reach the next stanza.
While reading the “A Reader’s Edition” of the Book of Mormon by Grant Hardy, I found that the commas and punctuation made me take more breaks throughout the sentence. This drastically changed the impact the sentences had on me, though the overall literary meaning of sentence was the same. At one point, I returned to the scriptural version to see if the commas were there. Sure enough, nothing had changed: “And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and tool nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions and tents, and departed into the wilderness.” (1 Nephi 2:4). From a literary standpoint, this sentence is not one that I would imagine seeing published in a professional piece of literature. The mid-branching format combine with the polysyndeton – and.. and… – makes it feel extremely choppy and long. There isn’t really a need for that many conjunctions, but they are there. However, the commas make each section feel distinguish from one another, inviting the reader to pause, and see just how much Lehi had to give up. It’s fascinating because again, it enhances the meaning, where as if I were reading this in scriptural format, I may have just completely skipped over this sentence.
While reading the “A Reader’s Edition” of the Book of Mormon by Grant Hardy, I found that the commas and punctuation made me take more breaks throughout the sentence. This drastically changed the impact the sentences had on me, though the overall literary meaning of sentence was the same. At one point, I returned to the scriptural version to see if the commas were there. Sure enough, nothing had changed: “And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and tool nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions and tents, and departed into the wilderness.” (1 Nephi 2:4). From a literary standpoint, this sentence is not one that I would imagine seeing published in a professional piece of literature. The mid-branching format combine with the polysyndeton – and.. and… – makes it feel extremely choppy and long. There isn’t really a need for that many conjunctions, but they are there. However, the commas make each section feel distinguish from one another, inviting the reader to pause, and see just how much Lehi had to give up. It’s fascinating because again, it enhances the meaning, where as if I were reading this in scriptural format, I may have just completely skipped over this sentence.
Another powerful tool that Hardy uses to format the paragraphs is a poetic like speech. The first example I noticed of this is when Lehi talks about “Great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord Almighty…” and he continues. (Hardy 6) To me, because Lehi’s words are structured in a poetic format the words have a greater impact on the reader as an audience. For example, it made me want to incline my ear and listen to what Lehi was saying. No longer did it feel like he was speaking to the Lord alone, but to an unseen audience, just as one of the actors in Shakespearean drama might speak a soliloquy, but so many unseen ears are listening. Again, this may be occurring due to the fact that I have a past familiarity with poetry written in this way, but then again, not all the block quotes Hardy used impacted me in this way.
I wholeheartedly agree with what you said. The formatting changed the way that I looked at the chapters, and the fact that Lehi's words to the Lord were cast in poetry made me read them a lot more carefully. The long paragraph style combined with all the punctuation made me read it differently, and I'm curious to see how the difference in poetry and prose will affect the way we read future chapters in this edition.
ReplyDeleteI liked your comment about poetic speech. It can be really difficult to pick out what's poetry and what's not when the whole chapter is arranged as verses.
ReplyDeleteThe poetic speech that Hardy uses adds an additional element to the Book of Mormon. So many prophets stopped to note that they felt inadequate to write for the Lord, so adding a poetic feature is interesting and perhaps how it was intended to be read. No one was able to go back and edit anything in The Book of Mormon, they were written on gold plates, so the editing and formatting was not emphasized. I think Hardy does a great job at formatting it in a more reader friendly way.
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