Cotton Mather as Diarist

Most scholars interested in Cotton Mather have read his diary; none has read Mather as diarist. The distinction is crucial. In the one case, the diary is a source of information. In the other, the diary is a work in a literary genre. In the one case, the diary is a record of events; in the other, a sequence of entries. In the one case, the diary is to be supplemented; in the other, it is a whole. To read Mather's diary is simply to hunt through it for something of interest. To read Mather as a diarist is to define his diaristic context, to describe his diary within that context, to establish its norms and exceptions, and to see how those norms and exceptions vary over time.