‘Speaking Well of the Dead'

In depicting the character and personality of their deceased subject, English Protestant ministers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries employ features of writing strikingly comparable to contemporary works of fictional narrative. Such features include not only the selective inclusion of biographical details from the subject’s life and death, but a spectrum of seemingly ‘literary’ devices such as the portrayal of multiple points of view through eyewitness ‘testimonials’, direct quotation of correspondence, poetry, diary entries, and vividly-realized deathbed scenes (some of which include dialogue).