I try to avoid the word boring when discussing required reading. Its best to simply stay the course and glean what I can from it. But the excerpts of the biographies by Cotton Mather are eye-crossingly, staggeringly boring. They contain sentences that go on for easily a third of a page and paragraphs that go on forever (in tiny print, thanks to Nortons typeset). Every anecdote is framed by multiple comparisons to famous Biblical characters or Greek philosophers. If we were to take Cottons word as gospel, we would come away believing that both Bradford and Winthrop (Puritan leaders) were paragons of truth and justice. They might not have walked on water, but that was only because they didnt try. I have a test on this material today and Im going to have to re-read it all, because Ive forgotten most of what I read yesterday. Cotton Mather himself was an interesting man, but Im torn between admiration for the things he accomplished--such as schools for slaves--and disgust at his role in the execution of innocent people in the Salem Witch trials.
Posted on: Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:52:21 +0000
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