UBC: The Logic of Millennial Thought
Jun. 19th, 2010 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyDavidson, James West. The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth-Century New England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
This is another book that I bought mostly because it was there that turned out to be excellent. James West Davidson is a careful and respectful--but not at all reverent--scholar of the eschatology of eighteenth-century New Englanders, and he pursues his exploration mindfully, discussing overtly and straightforwardly the differences between what modern readers expect of the eighteenth century Puritans and what they get, and the problems inherent in trying to make sense of a mindset that we no longer share or even fully understand. He also has a dry, snarky sense of humor that I enjoyed immensely (certainly the last thing I expected when I started this book was to be giggling over it); in particular, I appreciate the fact that he does not take Cotton Mather at that gentleman's own self-valuation: "Mather often had a sneaking suspicion (and sometimes not so sneaking) that God might be using him as a principal instrument in fulfilling the Revelation" (13).
As someone who has written a dissertation (this book began as Davidson's doctoral thesis), I appreciate the meta-level at which Davidson periodically assesses his progress: "The argument thus far has led to two not very helpful conclusions: first, biblical prophecies seemed important to many eighteenth-century New Englanders; and second, prophecies and expositions of them are strange to us" (37). This is one of the most transparent academic books I have ever read, and I really liked the way that transparency allowed the reader a sense of the work being done by the author: we're watching Davidson construct and test and then reconstruct his theories.
The thing that this book makes me very aware of, vis-a-vis the Salem witchcraft crisis, is that no one whom I have yet read on Salem has been a historian of ideas, and I'm beginning to think a historian of ideas is what the conversation needs. No one--again, whom I have read--has made any concerted effort to get inside Puritan witchcraft beliefs in the way that Davidson is working to get inside Puritan eschatology, and I think that failure is one reason that so many of these arguments have one leg that just won't support them. Because that aspect of the witchcraft crisis needs just as much rigor of examination as all the other aspects, and it isn't getting it.
This is another book that I bought mostly because it was there that turned out to be excellent. James West Davidson is a careful and respectful--but not at all reverent--scholar of the eschatology of eighteenth-century New Englanders, and he pursues his exploration mindfully, discussing overtly and straightforwardly the differences between what modern readers expect of the eighteenth century Puritans and what they get, and the problems inherent in trying to make sense of a mindset that we no longer share or even fully understand. He also has a dry, snarky sense of humor that I enjoyed immensely (certainly the last thing I expected when I started this book was to be giggling over it); in particular, I appreciate the fact that he does not take Cotton Mather at that gentleman's own self-valuation: "Mather often had a sneaking suspicion (and sometimes not so sneaking) that God might be using him as a principal instrument in fulfilling the Revelation" (13).
As someone who has written a dissertation (this book began as Davidson's doctoral thesis), I appreciate the meta-level at which Davidson periodically assesses his progress: "The argument thus far has led to two not very helpful conclusions: first, biblical prophecies seemed important to many eighteenth-century New Englanders; and second, prophecies and expositions of them are strange to us" (37). This is one of the most transparent academic books I have ever read, and I really liked the way that transparency allowed the reader a sense of the work being done by the author: we're watching Davidson construct and test and then reconstruct his theories.
The thing that this book makes me very aware of, vis-a-vis the Salem witchcraft crisis, is that no one whom I have yet read on Salem has been a historian of ideas, and I'm beginning to think a historian of ideas is what the conversation needs. No one--again, whom I have read--has made any concerted effort to get inside Puritan witchcraft beliefs in the way that Davidson is working to get inside Puritan eschatology, and I think that failure is one reason that so many of these arguments have one leg that just won't support them. Because that aspect of the witchcraft crisis needs just as much rigor of examination as all the other aspects, and it isn't getting it.
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Date: 2010-06-20 02:51 am (UTC)The first history of ideas I ever read was Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History by the great Russian intellectual Andrei Sinyavsky, got me hooked on Russo/Soviet history forever. First nonfiction book I ever enjoyed too. If you ever get tired of reading about Salem or need a reference for Russian history, I recommend it.
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Date: 2010-06-20 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-20 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-20 06:35 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for reading from Fairyland, btw, I keep hearing how wonderful it was.
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Date: 2010-06-20 07:11 pm (UTC)And I hope you like Dr. Davidson as much as I did.
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Date: 2010-06-20 12:51 pm (UTC)