Literatures of Wonder in Early Modern England and America Julie Sievers* St. Edward’s University Abstract This article surveys seventeenth-century narratives about ‘wonders’, ‘marvels’, ‘prodigies’, ‘providences’, and ‘remarkables’ and the scholarship that has treated them. Over the past 25 years, narratives about wonders and providences have played an increasingly important role in literary scholarship, the history of science, the history of the book, and the history of popular culture (and especially popular religious culture). The article considers the forms, meanings, and public roles of these ‘remarkable’ texts, and also discusses the scholarly movements that have led to their current prominence in the secondary literature. Although the article limits its focus to early modern texts produced in England and colonial America, it includes a wide range of print formats in which marvels and providences appeared, including cheap print formats such as broadsides and broadside ballads, almanacs, news pamphlets, and early chapbooks; as well as learned texts such as early natural philosophy (science) journals and anthologies published by ministers. The article opens by outlining the nexus of philosophical, political, and cultural developments that prompted an expanded interest in wonders, prodigies, and remarkables among both learned and common people in the period. It then explores the textual corpus itself and the varied rhetorical uses to which wonders were put by writers, publishers, and readers, using the history of Mary Dyer’s monster birth for illustration. Finally, it examines the secondary scholarship on these texts. There was a Maid in that Town (one Elizabeth Knap) who in the Moneth of October,Anno. 1671. was taken after a very strange manner, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing, sometimes roaring hideously, with violent motions and agitations of her body, crying out Money, Money, &c. In November following, her Tongue for many hours together was drawn like a semicircle up to the roof of her Mouth, not to be removed, though some tried with their fingers to do it. Six Men were scarce able to hold her in some of her fits, but she would skip about the House yelling and looking with a most frightful Aspect. December 17. Her Tongue was drawn out of her mouth to an extraordinary length; and now a Daemon began manifestly to speak in her. – Increase Mather, Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences In 1684, the story of Elizabeth Knap’s mysterious possession appeared originally in a widely selling anthology which gathered together a wide range of remarkable tales. The text grouped Knap with others whose lives © 2007 The Author Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Literature Compass 4/3 (2007): 766–783, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00450.x