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Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana" And Rehearsed Spectacles Of New England History, 1820-1862, Christopher Daniel Felker

Doctoral Dissertations

The decade from 1820-30, is a time recognized by many as a cultural moment when a truly "national" identity and its probable origins focused the attention of intellectuals. Part One of the dissertation examines the key moments in Magnalia dedicated to a political and historical appraisal of Puritanism in New England. In Part Two, I consider three works written after the publication of the Robbins edition: Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Grandfather's Chair" (1839); Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Ministers Wooing (1859); and Elizabeth Drew Stoddard's The Morgesons (1862). These works best illustrate the Magnalia's politically astute display of the accordance between a writer's …