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Writing to redundancy: approaches to spiritual journals and early modern spirituality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Tom Webster
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia

Abstract

The ‘puritan diary’ has received attention from historians and literary critics with little exchange between the approaches. Placing the diary in the context of experimental Calvinist personal discipline reveals that the form emerged independently of the literature of practical divinity. Considering the practice as a ‘technology of the self’ draws attention to the meanings of writing in a protestant context and encourages us to consider the cultural resources available to early modern protestants. Close reading of these texts suggests a greater degree of complexity than is often admitted and allows for a tension between different views of the salvific process. This tension between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms is helpful in understanding the religiosity of early modern protestants.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 This paper has benefited from criticisms and suggestions made in the History Research seminars at the University of Wales, Lampeter and the University of East Anglia. In particular I would like to thank Janice Allan, Bob Eaglestone and Julian Thomas for comments at Lampeter and Tom Betteridge, Colin Davis and Vic Morgan at UEA. As the paper was being written I received a great deal of help from Mary Baker, Patrick Finney, Sue Pitt and the Inter-disciplinary group at Lampeter. The debt to the thinking and support of Janice Allan is too great to be acknowledged in footnotes.

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