Pilgrim’s progress by John Bunyan

It was certainly celebrated as a text as popular as the Bible. JB is from the lower strata
of society, he wasn’t very much of a religious person to begin with and he found God at
some point in his life and he held on to it for the life you may say. He really …
The introduction to this handout contains evaluations or definitions of 17 th century
Christian denominations and we are talking here about the diff types Christianity. So the
church of Scotland and the Presbyterians is defined then we have Congregationalism
and Baptism and we are talking ABOUT THESE TWO IN PARTICULAR IN
CONNECTION WITH Bunyan because his type of Christianity is believed to have
become as Congregationalist and is considered as a type of Baptist and there are diff
types of baptism as well. And then we get other types of Christianity here that you can
read about from this handout.
The key event in terms of historical development is the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and
the GR is associated with a kind of definitive change in the direction of politics and
religion in the 17th century and onwards.
With the restoration of monarchy, we are talking about Charles 2 nd and James 2nd these
two have spent time on the continent in France in particular. They are very much
influenced by Loise14th their French cousin and in terms of religion they are influenced
by Catholicism and there is this threat of Catholicism hanging of in the country. And
there is a huge amount of public opinions against the Catholicism. So the latter half of
the 17th century is really a clash between diff types of Christianity on the stage of politics
as well as in literature. And we have this settled once and for all in 1688 when the
political figures of the day decided that they are going to invite William of Orange to
invade the country and solve the problem of Catholic England by throwing out James
the 2nd and establishing himself on the throne. And biographically is possible interesting
to mention that William of Orange was married to James the 2 nd daughter who was a
protestant. So there’s a kind of leaning there to rely on.
The GR gives more freedom to the expression of religious thought but this freedom in
the expression of religious thought favors obviously Protestantism in its various guises
and is very much against any Catholic believers as such.
Then what else is part of this handout here is an outline of theism as the typical 18 th
century combination of religion on the one hand and scientific advancement on the
other hand and it is sometimes referred to as a natural religion. So this explains
tendencies that we can go into if we are discussing the literature of the enlightenment
as differing from other periods of time and we reach to the definition of allegory coming
from the rattling dictionary of literary terms because what we are dealing with in the PP
is an allegory. And an allegory is a type of writing in which we have fixed meanings of
the symbols that involved in the literary text. In our case we have a protagonist who is
called, not from the very beginning, but he acquires the name Christian and becomes
an allegory of the journey of any Christian from this world to the next one.
We are discussing this text with its religious connotations because it paves the way to
what of development of the novel.
The novel hasn’t appeared yet at the time of Bunyan’s “Pilgrims’ progress” actually what
we have at the center of literary concerns is poetry. Prose is very much in the periphery,
it’s not considered literature, it’s used for the writing of philosophical tractates, religious
commentaries, documents, etc. Everything that is of literary value is written in verse.
Even on stage drama is composed of verses and Shakespeare is a good example of a
poet writing drama in verse. After the restoration of the monarchy there are two diff
sources for taking prose to what’s the center of the literary stage and one of them is the
PP and the other one is comedy. So comedy, unlike drama, was written in prose and
had the odd bits and pieces that were in verse. So everything that the novel had to
borrow from were such stories as Bunyan’s PP and comedy. So what we have here in
Bunyan’s PP is a narrative that incorporates speech for the first time, because up to this
point everyone was speaking directly only on stage and if you have a story in verse
everything will be reproduced from the point of view of the narrator. How does this work
exactly? - is in the 1st paragraph of the text:
“As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was
a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I
dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with
his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.”
This is the framework and the narrator will come back into the focus of the reader in the
end of this story. Everything in between is more of a third person narrative about this
man he has observed in his dream. So even though it begins with the sentence “As I
walked…” and it gives you the sense of a first person narrative about sb involved in the
story that they are telling us about, actually this is not the case, actually this is just the
framework. And this framework is often used in literary convention later on.
With this introduction what we learn about our protagonist, about the hero who is going
to be in the center of the story, we learn about a book in his hand and this book is the
Bible. So this is the introduction of the protagonist to the Bible and spiritual conversion.
There’s also a great burden upon his shoulder and this is the awareness of sinfulness
that is going to accompany him for quite a lot of the way. So this spiritual journey is
represented as a very physical and factual trip from this world to the next one and
there’s a great BBC dramatization which also incorporates some of John Bunyan’s
biography in the storyline. I’ll highlight here a couple of things that are important for the
purposes of literature discussions:
1. The incorporation of direct speech. The first example is in the first excerpt he a
toured this lamentable cry saying “what shall I do” and then we have further
examples of this character speaking or other characters speaking that their
words are not always graphically signified with quotation marks because it was
sth new and the author didn’t know how to handle this. But the fact that we have
 a direct speech involved in the storytelling is an innovation that is going to serve
in the development of the novel later in the 17 th century or in the 18th century
when we have the classical novel in English developing.
This excerpt 283 is interesting because our character who is called Christian by now
is on his way to the Celestial city and he is with a friend. And these two friends are
sort of loose their way and they are in unfamiliar ground and let’s see how the
characterization of their psychological state turns into a character appearing them.
{283} Neither could they, with all the skill they had, get again to the stile that night.
Wherefore, at last, lighting under a little shelter, they sat down there until the
daybreak; but, being weary, they fell asleep. Now there was, not far from the place
where they lay, a castle called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant
Despair; and it was in his grounds they now were sleeping: wherefore he, getting up
in the morning early, and walking up and down in his fields, caught Christian and
Hopeful asleep in his grounds. Then, with a grim and surly voice, he bid them
awake; and asked them whence they were, and what they did in his grounds. They
told him they were pilgrims, and that they had lost their way. Then said the Giant,
You have this night trespassed on me, by trampling in and lying on my grounds, and
therefore you must go along with me. So they were forced to go, because he was
stronger than they. They also had but little to say, for they knew themselves in a
fault. The Giant, therefore, drove them before him, and put them into his castle, into
a very dark dungeon, nasty and stinking to the spirits of these two men. [Ps.88:18]
Here, then, they lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday night, without one bit of
bread, or drop of drink, or light, or any to ask how they did; they were, therefore,
here in evil case, and were far from friends and acquaintance. Now in this place
Christian had double sorrow, because it was through his unadvised counsel that
they were brought into this distress.
N.B. A stile is a piece of equipment meant to help you cross the boundaries between
different properties. So it involves a couple of steps that help you get over a wall.
This is what is meant here by a stile - walls are in place or fences are in place to
prevent animals from crossing from one properties to another and for human beings
their steps to transit.
N.B. Doubting Castle – So they’re in the middle of a journey, they don’t know what
they’re doing there, they’re very much in doubt. So this psychological state is a
really physically materializing here as a castle and the owner of a castle. So the
castle is called Doubting castle and the owner whereof is called Giant Despair.
Christian – the protagonist
Hopeful – his companion
It was written in plain English and this is why it got so very popular just as popular as
the Bible because everybody could read it, if they could read, they didn’t need any
formal education in order to understand the words or in order to understand the
meaning of the entire story. All these psychological states are very much reflected
into the allegorical characters that appear in the text – we have diff characters like
Mr. Blindman, Mr. Nogood, Mr. Maless, Mr. Love, Mr. Lust, and obviously the names
are indicative of the ruling passions of these characters. We have character who is
called Faithfull who is a marcher for his faith and looses his life on this journey to the
Celestial city but he is a kind of an exemplary Christian. The ordinary sort of
Christian is represented by the protagonist is called Christian who is not so adamant
about his belief, who is in doubt half of the time and who doesn’t know whether he is
going to make it, whether he has the internal strength to persevere in God’s ways.
And the detail about them being thrown into prison without food, and without drink
and without light is also interesting with this last caveat there that nobody was there
to ask how they were, nobody was there to show compassion or to offer any kind of
help. They were on their own and this was the most depressing of all the
circumstances that they have to endure.
The story was very successful although it wasn’t published immediately when
Bunyan came up with it. He published it when he got back from prison and he was in
prison for refusing to observe this ban on speaking in public which was in plays
before the GR and this is half a myth half a fact that he was offered to go home and
take care of his wife and his children only if he promised never to speak in public
again and to try to spread his Christian believe to others and he refused because
according to this version of the story “What am I to say to God when I face him, why
did I give up the task that he’d given me in live?”, so he spent 12 years in prison as a
result of this.
It was popular with all social classes it is very realistic in the details as with the Satyr
being thrown into prison. It is about the author’s own spiritual growth but also the
spiritual journey to anyone who wants to get into the ways of Christianity. It offers
good characterization for the people, for the characters involved, and this is sth that
is going to become central for the genre. Very often novels are entitled with the
name of their protagonist this is how important their characters are to novels. They
feature in the title themselves. This is definitely a contribution to what the
development of skill in terms of writing, the development of appreciation in terms of
perceiving texts that would end up with the genre of the novel. There is also a kind of
liveliness of reality attached to this type of writing, there is individual sympathy for
what the characters are going through, so this is very much obvious as you handle
the text.
The PP was so successful, there was so much interest in it that he wrote a sequel
about Christian’s wife and her journey to what’s the Celestial city following her
husband as it were. But that part 2 load very popular in old times, nowadays it is less
talk about than part 1.