Feeling with Demons. The role of emotions in Increase and Cotton Mather´s demonological treatises: the case of rage (Massachusetts, c.1680-1700)

AGUSTIN MENDEZ

Melbourne

Seminario; The Early Modern Circle at the University of Melbourne; 2022

University of Melbourne

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,England experienced two different editorial successes:publications about the passions, and treatises ondemonology. The former intended, among other things, toteach readers how to discipline their emotions, while thelatter expressed the framework within which the culturalelite understood and debated witchcraft. Due totransatlantic migrations and exiles, the interest in bothliterary genres was exported to the New World. In thisseminar, Agustín Mendez will aim to considerdemonological ideas as privileged means to know theattitudes that complex social groups maintained towardsthe expression and portrayal of specific emotions. The talkwill focus on the representation of rage in thedemonological treatises published by puritan theologiansIncrease Mather (1639-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728)in connection with the political, cultural, and religioustransformations taking place in Massachusetts during the1680s and 1690s.