Language, Identity, and American Memory in Cotton Mather's La fe del christiano (1699)

FAIN: HB-232111-16

Kirsten S. Gruesz
Regents of the University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA 95064-1077)

Preparation of a book-length study of La fe del christiano (Boston, 1699), the first Spanish-language publication in English North America, written by Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663-1728).

La fe del christiano (Boston, 1699) is the first Spanish publication in English North America. This study will examine different facets of the pamphlet, from conception to production to dissemination. The chapters radiate outward from La fe del christiano to consider topics as wide-ranging as the Sephardic diaspora, the Elizabethan invention of modern-language tutoring manuals, Jesuit vs. Puritan theories of Bible translation, the Salem Witch Trials, and the way the news of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 traveled to Mexico City—always returning again to the central text. It reconstructs the philosophies of language—and the related, but not identical, notions of race and ethnicity—in circulation at this moment, and speculates on the traces they have left for us today.

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