Godly tales : short narratives in transatlantic protestant culture, 1620-1740

Abstract

This study surveys the intersection of transatlantic Protestant culture and the formal development of short narratives in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in British North America. I argue that – contrary to the critical consensus – the short narration of this period was neither ‘formless’ nor ‘didactic,’ but develops complex narrative strategies to accommodate increasingly competing theological and scientific world-views. Using a wide range of British and colonial sources, like Thomas Beard’s Theatre of Gods Judgement (1597), Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), as well as a variety of sermons, diaries, broadsides and other cheap prints, this study demonstrates that short narratives move freely through different types of publications, both religious and secular, and across the Atlantic. Short narration becomes integral to a variety of publications and genres because it allows to combine argumentation and theology with individual experience in a condensed and entertaining manner.