Boswell’s Self-Hatred

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter turns from public and highly social forms of hate towards private self-hatred. It reads James Boswell’s journals, kept devotedly throughout his life, within the tradition of the spiritual diary, a genre marked by intense loathing of earthly life and man’s sinfulness. In the Calvinist-Christian tradition, self-hatred should give rise to love of God, but Boswell struggled to find any consolation in his hateful feelings. His extraordinarily candid journals document the high risks of confession, the way that speaking from the heart renders the confessor hateable. And, indeed, Boswell has been easily despised by generations of readers and critics.</jats:p>