The Day of Doom[1] (Anglice, 'Dies fati', 'Dies iudicii') est poema religiosum a clerico Michaele Wigglesworth compositum, quod liber classicus et optime venitus in Nova Anglia Puritanica centum annos factum est post annum 1662, cum primum proferetur. Poema diem Iudicii describit cum vindicans Christianitatis Deus peccatores (inter quos, per theologiam Puritanam, infantuli non baptizati) poenis in inferno damnabit. Liber populo fuit tam acceptus quam primae editiones tam saepe lectae sunt quam dilabi solebant. Nullae editiones primae iam exsistere habentur; editiones alterae sunt rarissimae.[2]
Poema est "summarium theologiae Calvinisticae versibus incultis expositum,"[3][4] quod "statim populo gratissimum factum est. Mille octingenta exemplaria singulo anno venierunt, et poema locum securum in Puritanis Novae Angliae domibus proximum saeculum tenuit."[5] Secundum Norton Anthology of American Literature (vol. 1), "unus fere ex viginti hominibus in Nova Anglia eum emit."[6] Usque ad 1828, multi senes iam vivebant qui eius verba iterare potebant ut eis in eorum catechismo docta erant; et quo latiore in copiosis illius aetatis contionibus legimus, eo accuratior eius repraesentatio theologiae pervulgatae in Nova Anglia videtur."[7][8] Textus, longissimum aetatis colonicae poema, 224 versuum series habet.
- ↑ Michael Wigglesworth (1665, editio sexta 1715, retractata 1867). "The day of doom: or, A poetical description of the great and last judgment". Google Books.
- ↑ Catalog entry for Harvard Library's 2nd edition.
- ↑ Anglice: "doggerel epitome of Calvinistic theology,"
- ↑ Colonial Prose and Poetry (1903).
- ↑ Anglice: "attained immediately a phenomenal popularity. Eighteen hundred copies were sold within a year, and for the next century it held a secure place in New England Puritan households."
- ↑ Anglice: "about one out of every twenty persons in New England bought it."
- ↑ Anglice: "the more widely one reads in the voluminous sermons of that generation, the more fair will its representation of prevailing theology in New England appear."
- ↑ William P. Trent et Benjamin W. Wells, Colonial Prose and Poetry: The Beginnings of Americanism 1650–1710 (Novi Eboraci: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1903).