Michael Wigglesworth: Devoted Preacherman Overcomes Sickliness And Silly Name to Write The First Am

Michael Wigglesworth: Devoted Preacherman Overcomes Sickliness And Silly Name to Write The First American Bestseller

THE MAN (NO MYTH, NO LEGEND)

Puritan diaries provide feeble fodder for biographical blurbs. Most diaries focus primarily on spiritual growth. The diary of Michael Wigglesworth is hardly an exception. As noted in the reputable Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Wigglesworth’s private, personal life is surrounded by much ambiguity and conjecture." Wigglesworth (1631-1705) spent the bulk of his life in Malden, Massachusetts, his activities alternating between preaching, writing preachy poetry, and retching in pain. He studied at Harvard and eventually became a practicing physician and minister. He hardly had a year of preaching under his proverbial belt when an obscure "painful, lingering" disease smote him silly. The disease ravaged his innards for nearly twenty years, during which time he had to decline the presidency of Harvard and turn to poetry as a means of preaching from his sickbed (Bosco 337-342).

When compared to some of his contemporaries, Wigglesworth composed a fairly slim collection of poetry. However, "The Day of Doom," an Edwards-esque diatribe detailing the second coming of Christ, achieved immense popularity. Hailed by numerous scholars as "the first American bestseller," the poem (comprise of 224 eight-line stanzas) was an immediate success in the American colonies. Generations of schoolchildren memorized it, and their pious parents clutched it closely. Perhaps roused by his success, or by his marriage to a woman 25 years his junior, Wigglesworth "made a startling recovery" and spurned his disease. As Cotton Mather observed, "It pleased God wondrously to restore His Faithful Servant. He...

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...mporaries: Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor. Wigglesworth’s style "strikes contemporary readers as more appropriate to the pulpit than to poetic stanzas." The didactic style, exactly what Puritan readers favored, displeases most modern readers (Bosco 337-342).

Works Cited

Bosco, Ronald A. "Michael Wigglesworth." Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol 24: American Colonial Writers. Ed. Emory Elliot. Princeton U: Gale Group, 1984. 337-342.

Radel, Nicholas F. " A Sodom Within: Historicizing Puritan Homoerotics in the Diary of Michael Wigglesworth." The Puritan Origins of American Sex. Eds. Tracy Fessenden, Nicholas F. Radel, and Magdalena J. Zaborowska. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Works Consulted

Wigglesworth, Michael. The Day of Doom, or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment. Ed. Kenneth B. Murdock. New York: Russell & Russell, 1966.