Title
On Writing the History of So Much Grief: Cotton Mather's Decennium Luctuosum and the Trauma of Colonial History
Abstract
In 1699 Cotton Mather published his history of King William's War, Decennium Luctuosum. Historians and literary critics have taken note of the bodily violence throughout the text and have argued that the text's rhetorical and rhetoric of violence suggest his anger at Puritan settlers for turning away from Ministerial authority. This study takes a different approach to Decennium Luctuosum by acknowledging the importance of grief in the text. It argues that grief and trauma were key to understanding how Mather attempted to regenerate the Puritan community in the wake of the crisis it experienced in the sorrowful decade of the 1690s.
Department(s)
History
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2017.0017
Keywords
Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum, grief, trauma, historiography
Publication Date
2017
Recommended Citation
Kennedy, Kathleen. "On Writing the History of So Much Grief: Cotton Mather's Decennium Luctuosum and the Trauma of Colonial History." The Eighteenth Century 58, no. 2 (2017): 219-241.
Journal Title
The Eighteenth Century
