Wigglesworth's Poems Background

Wigglesworth's Poems Background

Michael Wigglesworth was a Puritan minister who embodied all the negative connotations of the Puritans. He bore an exagerated inferiority complex and later on married his cousin as he felt that he would be unable to find another woman. He was also offered presidency at Havard but rejected it due to his inferiority complex.

His work deals mainly with the sins of Man and Judgement Day. His bestselling poem, the "Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment", was a poem about the Judgement of Man and was a "doggerel epitome of Calvinistic theology" as referred to by the collection. In fact, his work was so popular among the Puritans at that time that it almost became a permanant fixture within Puritan households in New England within a century.

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