www.wvttrier.de 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 uncovers the 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 .................1 1. Relevancy of Elisabeth Elliot's Writing for the Study of Culture: Current State of Research and Historical Contextualization .........................2 2. Concepts of the Contact Zone: Cultural Models and Narrative Modes ...... 10 3. Life Writing: Genre or Practice? ................................................................. 12 4. Premises, Methodology, and Structure........................................................ 16 II. THE CULTURAL WORK OF NARRATIVE FORM IN LIFE WRITING .................... 20 1. The Cognitive Impact on Cultural Formation ............................................. 20 1.1 Cognitive Models of Culture: Conceptualization and Developments in Anthropology ................................................... 20 1.2 Connectionism: Centrifugal and Centripetal Tendencies of Cultural Properties .......................................................................... 24 1.3 Cognitive Processes of Meaning-Making: Intramental Translation, Mediating Structures, and Compartmentalization .............................. 27 2. Cultural Meaning-Making in American Life Narratives ............................. 35 2.1 Cultural Ways of Worldmaking and Narrative Communities ............. 35 2.2 The Redemptive Self: Prominent American Narrative Modes and Cultural Models of Life Writing .................................................. 41 3. The Cultural Work of Form in Life Writing ................................................ 44 3.1 Cultural Formalist Approaches to Textual Forms of Life Writing ...... 44 3.2 From Hagiographic to Essayistic Forms: Investigating Affordances and Constraints of Narrative Forms for their Cultural Work in Life Writing .............................................. 47 III. HAGIOGRAPHIC DESIGN: REDEMPTIVE SELVES IN THROUGH GATES OF SPLENDOR (1957) ..................................................... 49 1. From Martyr Passion to Legend: Af