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Technologies of Inoculation

Cristobal Silva

in Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative

This chapter examines the interlinked histories of inoculation and print during the 1721 Boston inoculation controversy. Cotton Mather claimed that he learned about inoculation from his slave ... More

This chapter examines the interlinked histories of inoculation and print during the 1721 Boston inoculation controversy. Cotton Mather claimed that he learned about inoculation from his slave Onesimus, and he advocated for it as a treatment during smallpox epidemics. Following the lead of William Douglass, anti-inoculists engaged Mather and his supporters in a wide-ranging exchange that Perry Miller eventually dismissed as a “tiff about style.” While the controversy initially focused on the procedure’s effectiveness and safety, it quickly devolved into an exchange of satires and parodies of opposing viewpoints. This chapter investigates the formal and stylistic concerns at the heart of the controversy, and reveals how these rely on representations of Native Americans and Africans, who unwittingly became vehicles for medical arguments. The formal qualities of African speech took on epistemological significance, and were held up as proof of the relative truth and falsity of scientific evidence. The positioning of Africans in the debate engages modern assumptions about the liberalizing tendencies of eighteenth-century medicine and print culture, underscoring the exclusionary practices that mark those Africans as the objects—rather than subjects—of liberalism.Less

Abandoned and Adopted in a New World

Carol J. Singley

in Adopting America: Childhood, Kinship, and National Identity in Literature

The early Puritans ambivalently left England, the mother country, portraying themselves as abandoned orphans. Sustained by the belief that they were chosen people, they also emulated ... More

The early Puritans ambivalently left England, the mother country, portraying themselves as abandoned orphans. Sustained by the belief that they were chosen people, they also emulated salvation—adoption by God—by taking in others’ children. The writings of Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall demonstrate the fluidity of Puritan households and a commitment to helping children through informal and temporary forms of adoption. At the same time, however, a need for certainty and control, a fear of outsiders, and a patriarchal emphasis on genealogical continuity made early Americans suspicious of adoptive kinship.Less

Augustan American Literature: An Aesthetics of Extravagance

Paul Giles

in The Global Remapping of American Literature

This chapter examines the Augustan tradition in American literature, arguing that it should not be seen as confined to the world of belles lettres. It suggests that Augustan American literature ... More

This chapter examines the Augustan tradition in American literature, arguing that it should not be seen as confined to the world of belles lettres. It suggests that Augustan American literature involves the creative entanglement of potentially contradictory narratives, and the peculiar power of its art derives from its sense of being deliberately out of place, of transgressing the boundaries of civil convention in the interests of exploration and extravagance. The chapter explores the relationship between plantations and the aesthetics of extravagance by offering a critique of Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana, which describes an increasing sense toward the end of the seventeenth century of the importance of geography, of the position of New England in relation to the rest of the world. It also analyzes the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, Timothy Dwight, and Richard Alsop.Less

“What about Peace?”: Cotton Mather’s Millennium and the Rise of International Law

Nan Goodman

in Law and the Utopian Imagination

This chapter examines how the language of the law is not only reflected in but also helps to shape even those utopic imaginations that are often embedded in millenialist visions of Christianity and ... More

This chapter examines how the language of the law is not only reflected in but also helps to shape even those utopic imaginations that are often embedded in millenialist visions of Christianity and that are so often thought to be especially impervious to contemporary events. In examining Cotton Mather's book-length sermon, Things to be Look’d For, the chapter argues that not only was Mather engaging with legal visions in a religious context, but that the law to which he turns for those visions was not domestic, as was typically the case, but international. Influenced by the principles of international law, Mather, the chapter argues, turns the concept of peace, which was central to the millenialist utopia, from a static into a dynamic phenomenon like that emerging from the law and the many peace treaties that followed in its wake.Less

Landfall: The New World as New Creation

John Gatta

in Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and the Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present

During the colonial era, British settlers only gradually allowed North America’s actual physical environment to shape their idea of the New World they inhabited. Although New England Puritans were ... More

During the colonial era, British settlers only gradually allowed North America’s actual physical environment to shape their idea of the New World they inhabited. Although New England Puritans were generally fearful of unsettled land, they were also disposed to regard the wild continent as uncorrupted space—and even, on occasion, as a sacred site of regeneration by contrast with the rejected Catholic emphasis on locally consecrated church edifices. That distrust toward the American environment shown, for example, in writing by Governor William Bradford must be understood in its proper historical and religious context. Bradford’s Puritan theology thus proves to be no less ecologically benign than the neopagan, naturalistic religion that informs the writing of Thomas Morton, whose famous maypole at Ma-re Mount disturbed the peace of nearby Plymouth. By the third-generation era of Cotton Mather, Puritan New Englanders had become all the more willing to envision the continent itself as a sanctified geophysical place that could be compared through biblical typology with the land of Israel.Less

Building Bensalem at Massachusetts Bay: The Search For Solomon’s Adamic Wisdom

Zachary McLeod Hutchins

in Inventing Eden: Primitivism, Millennialism, and the Making of New England

Chapter 4 documents the influence of Francis Bacon, Comenius, and the new science on colonial aspirations to the intellectual perfections enjoyed by Adam and partially restored by Solomon. John ... More

Chapter 4 documents the influence of Francis Bacon, Comenius, and the new science on colonial aspirations to the intellectual perfections enjoyed by Adam and partially restored by Solomon. John Cotton, Leonard Hoar, and other early administrators of Harvard College linked New England educational endeavors to Bacon’s emphasis on induction and his plans for “the advancement of knowledge”; Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards collaborated in transatlantic scientific inquiries with the Royal Society. In contrast to these collaborative attempts to institutionalize the search for edenic wisdom, the chapter presents Anne Bradstreet’s individual quest to rewrite the legacy of Eve, whose search for wisdom in fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil resulted in mankind’s Fall from paradise. Chapter 4 thus extends the examination of Eve’s legacy in New England that began in chapter 3, highlighting ways in which resistance to the Genesis narrative shaped major portions of Bradstreet’s oeuvre.Less

The Manufactured Millennium

Nan Goodman

in The Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination

The Puritans reconceptualized the millennium—their vision of peace in the world to come. As a religiously inspired end-of-the-world scenario, most political and legal historians see the millennium as ... More

The Puritans reconceptualized the millennium—their vision of peace in the world to come. As a religiously inspired end-of-the-world scenario, most political and legal historians see the millennium as the product of Christian universalism, whose exclusionary and apocalyptic nature the law of nations was designed to overcome. Looking closely at its changing profile among late seventeenth-century Puritans, we find that the millennium developed in parallel with and was informed by the cosmopolis that stood geopolitically and hermeneutically at the center of the law of nations. Once described in abstract terms lacking spatial specificity, the reorganized geopolitical millennium appears in three book-length sermons by Cotton Mather and includes a variety of jurisdictions in what the West had considered newly discovered territories, such as the New World colonies, as well as newly appreciated old territories, such as the Ottoman Empire, giving it many of the attributes of a cosmopolis itself.Less

Cosmopolitan Communication and the Discourse of Pietism

Nan Goodman

in The Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination

The chapter makes a case for cosmopolitanism in the development of Pietism, a movement of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that put the Puritans in touch with what was called the ... More

The chapter makes a case for cosmopolitanism in the development of Pietism, a movement of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that put the Puritans in touch with what was called the Protestant International. Unlike more conventional readings of the “internationalism” of Pietism, which focus on the networks the Puritans established with coreligionists across the world, this chapter links Pietism to the creation of a cosmopolitan language, which can be seen most explicitly in Cotton Mather’s version of late seventeenth-century Pietism.Less

Typologizing the Jew: The Judeo-Centric Foundations of America’s Covenantal Vocation

Robert O. Smith

in More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism

This chapter explores how the Judeo-centric tradition of prophecy interpretation informed negotiations of ‘American’ identity among English subjects in the New World, specifically the Puritan ... More

This chapter explores how the Judeo-centric tradition of prophecy interpretation informed negotiations of ‘American’ identity among English subjects in the New World, specifically the Puritan settlers in New England. Presuming intellectual continuity between the settlers and their English home context, the chapter shows that the Puritan colonists inherited and refined for their context the apocalyptic tradition of Judeo-centric prophecy interpretation, including that tradition’s anti-Catholic and anti-Islamic elements. Special attention is given to speculation about the location of the New Jerusalem in the thought of Samuel Sewall and Cotton Mather, as well as to the place of civil millennialism in the thought of Jonathan Edwards.Less

Mysteries, Memories, and Metaphors: From Event to Memory

in The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter examines the role of cultural memory in the American imagination of the Salem witch trials and analyzes how it was formed. It reviews two competing narratives about the 1692 witch ... More

This chapter examines the role of cultural memory in the American imagination of the Salem witch trials and analyzes how it was formed. It reviews two competing narratives about the 1692 witch trials: Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World and Robert Calef's challenge to that version, More Wonders of the Invisible World. The chapter describes how these versions shaped the memory of Salem by the time of the American Revolution nearly one hundred years later.Less

A Fish Tale: Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather on Jonah’s Whale

Ava Chamberlain

in Jonathan Edwards and Scripture: Biblical Exegesis in British North America

Ava Chamberlain treats Jonthan Edwards’ interpretation of the biblical story of Jonah, comparing it with that of Cotton Mather and that of early modern skeptics. In this case study, she shows how ... More

Ava Chamberlain treats Jonthan Edwards’ interpretation of the biblical story of Jonah, comparing it with that of Cotton Mather and that of early modern skeptics. In this case study, she shows how exegetes like Edwards and Mather probed the meaning of Hebrew terms and considered how the biblical account accorded with the natural world—all in the face of those who derided the Jonah story as a farce. Her work highlights how early modern questions about the Bible’s historicity informed and affected the exegesis of Protestants like Edwards and Mather. It also demonstrates that although Edwards and Mather engaged the biblical text in many similar ways, Edwards also differed in the degree to which he emphasized the need for divine grace to understand the Bible, a forceful assertion of supernaturalism against the emerging naturalism of his time.Less

“God's Secret”: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemical Healing, and the Medical Culture of Early New England

Walter W. Woodward

in Prospero's America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676

This chapter describes Jonathan Brewster's concern that news of his discovery of the “Elixer, fitt for Medicine, and healing of all maladyes” would bring a throng of people to his remote woodland ... More

This chapter describes Jonathan Brewster's concern that news of his discovery of the “Elixer, fitt for Medicine, and healing of all maladyes” would bring a throng of people to his remote woodland plantation. It reflected the reality he had seen in the demand for the alchemical medical services of John Winthrop, Jr. Demand for his advice and medicines came from all over New England and as far away as Barbados and across the Atlantic in England. Suffering people arrived at New London in numbers that strained the capacity of the town and of Winthrop himself to provide for them. Cotton Mather said of Winthrop, “Where-ever he came, still the Diseased flocked about him, as if the Healing Angel of Bethesda had appeared in the place.” Mather praised his “noble Medicines” and called him “a true adept.”Less

Theology in Colonial America

Mark A. Noll

in America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

Theologians dominated the public square in Colonial America. Colonial American theology in many ways maintained continuity with Old World understandings of the world and the church. Colonial ... More

Theologians dominated the public square in Colonial America. Colonial American theology in many ways maintained continuity with Old World understandings of the world and the church. Colonial theologians emphasized the importance of historic confessions and creeds and viewed hierarchical social structure as God‐given.Less

How to Help Melancholicks: Mather

Jennifer Radden

in The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva

This chapter presents Cotton Mather's discussion of melancholy. Mather was a Puritan divine who lived between 1663 and 1728. Educated at Harvard, he was ordained in 1685 and later succeeded his ... More

This chapter presents Cotton Mather's discussion of melancholy. Mather was a Puritan divine who lived between 1663 and 1728. Educated at Harvard, he was ordained in 1685 and later succeeded his father as the pastor of North Church. He is best known for his part in the Salem witch trials, the climate for which he helped create with his influential sermons and the 1689 publication of his work Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possession. His last major work, The Angel of Bethesda, was a medical compendium, offering a list of “the Common Maladies of Mankind,” accompanied by remedies and by practical directions of a preventive kind. His discussion on melancholy, which he ambitiously entitles “The Cure of Melancholy,” is a curious blend of orthodox 17th-century ideas about melancholy derived from medical authorities such as Thomas Willis (1630–75) and Mather's own pragmatic New England emphasis on solutions to the social and practical problems melancholia raises for those such as himself, with pastoral responsibilities.Less

Deploying Amazons: Women and Wartime Propaganda

Gina M. Martino

in Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast

Chapter 3 explores the relationship between women’s war making in the northeastern borderlands and propaganda. It argues that political and religious leaders used accounts of women’s martial ... More

Chapter 3 explores the relationship between women’s war making in the northeastern borderlands and propaganda. It argues that political and religious leaders used accounts of women’s martial activities to improve morale and influence policy at local, colonial, and imperial levels. Images of Amazons and other mythical and historical women warriors often appeared in this propaganda, establishing a precedent for women’s actions in North America and adding excitement and familiar literary figures that resonated with readers. In New France, Jesuit missionaries used the figure of the Amazon to positively portray Native female combatants as well as brave nuns who traveled to Canada. They also used their published reports, the Jesuit Relations, to urge wealthy French women to be brave like Canada’s Amazon-nuns and donate to the mission. In New England, officials held up women who made war (such as Hannah Dustan) as positive, Christian role models when morale was low, and writers such as the Rev. Cotton Mather sent accounts of women’s war making to England in attempts to shape imperial policy.Less

Spiritual Meaning and Experimental Piety in the Exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards

Jan Stievermann and Ryan P. Hoselton

in Jonathan Edwards and Scripture: Biblical Exegesis in British North America

Jan Stievermann and Ryan P. Hoselton consider the role of experiential piety in the exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. Both were deeply engaged in the new critical questions of their ... More

Jan Stievermann and Ryan P. Hoselton consider the role of experiential piety in the exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. Both were deeply engaged in the new critical questions of their day, and both were also committed to nurturing religious piety—though they differed somewhat in how they handled these concerns. Although Mather was profoundly interested in the philological and historical issues in the Bible, he prioritized devotional and contemplative engagement with Scripture. Edwards, Stievermann and Hoselton argue, drew on the experimental language and philosophy of the Enlightenment to construct a case for the supernatural authority of the Bible against increasingly naturalistic arguments. Edwards held that one gains spiritual understanding as the Holy Spirit harmonizes the believer’s internal senses with the Word; this reconstruction affected Edwards’ approach to the emotive element in Scripture, the dynamism of typology, and the nature of the regenerate interpreter of the Bible.Less

Setting up for Themselves, 1697–1701

Mark G. Hanna

in Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740

This chapter examines the political implications of illicit sea marauding in the British Empire during the period 1697–1701. Beginning in 1692, waves of sea marauders arrived in the North American ... More

This chapter examines the political implications of illicit sea marauding in the British Empire during the period 1697–1701. Beginning in 1692, waves of sea marauders arrived in the North American colonies from the Indian Ocean, settling down in port towns or buying farms and marrying local women. They probably could not have imagined they would play a central role in a political drama. From 1697 to 1701, pirates sparked riots in nearly every colony. However, the true source of radicalism was the colonial gentry. The chapter first considers Cotton Mather's criticism of the piratical economy before turning to fundamental questions about the source of political power in colonial communities. It then looks at accusations against Quakers for their alleged support and protection for pirates and William Penn's views about the piracy problem. It also discusses two laws passed by Parliament in 1700 to address illicit sea marauding: the Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy and An Act to Punish Governors of Plantations in This Kingdom for Crimes by Them Committed in the Plantations.Less