John Bunyan (1628-1688)

and his
The Pilgrim’s Progress
John Bunyan
(1628-1688)

John Bunyan
born November 1628,
Elstow, Bedfordshire,
England
died August 31, 1688,
London.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
John Bunyan – celebrated
English writer and
preacher, author
of The Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678).
The Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678) - the
book that was the
most characteristic
expression of the Puritan
religious outlook.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
John Bunyan - the son of a brazier, or
travelling tinker.
He was brought up in the heart
of England’s agricultural Midlands.
Bunyan learned to read and write at a
local grammar school, but he probably left
school early to learn the family trade.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Bunyan’s mind and imagination were formed in
his early years by influences other than those of
formal education.
He absorbed the popular tales of adventure that
appeared in chapbooks and were sold at fairs.
One of such fairs, the great one held at
Stourbridge near Cambridge, provided the
inspiration for Vanity Fair in The Pilgrim’s
Progress.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Though Bunyan’s family belonged to the Anglican
church, he also became acquainted with the
varied popular literature of the English Puritans:
plain-speaking sermons,
homely moral dialogues,
books of melodramatic judgments and acts of
divine guidance,
John Foxe’s The Book of Martyrs,

And above all - the Bible.

John Bunyan (1628-1688)
In 1644 a series of misfortunes separated the country
boy from his family and drove him into the world.
His mother died in June, his younger sister Margaret in
July; in August his father married a third wife.

The English Civil Wars had broken out, and in

November John Bunyan was sent to reinforce the
garrison at Newport Pagnell.
Bunyan remained in Newport until July 1647 and
probably saw little fighting.
 John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Bunyan’s military service brought him in touch with
the seething religious life of the left-wing sects
within Oliver Cromwell’s army, who were beginning
to question all religious authority except that of the
individual conscience.
Thus Bunyan became acquainted with the leading
ideas of the Puritans, who believed that the striving
for religious truth meant an obstinate personal
search and relying on free grace revealed to the
individual.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Some time after his discharge from the army
(in July 1647) and before 1649, Bunyan
married.
The couple had four children – Mary,
Elizabeth, John, and Thomas.
Bunyan’s first wife died in 1658.
Bunyan married again in 1659.
 John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Bunyan’s conversion to Puritanism was a gradual
process in the years following his first marriage (1650-55).
This it is dramatically described in his autobiography,
Grace Abounding.
According to the author, this process started as he began
to concentrate on his inner life.
This period was full of agonizing temptations, which at
times led him to spiritual despair.
He was supported by his association with the Bedford
Separatist church and its dynamic leader, John Gifford.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Bunyan soon proved his talents as a preacher of
the Bedford community. Fresh from his own spiritual
troubles, he was fitted to warn and console others.
The Restoration of Charles II brought to an end the
20 years in which the separated churches had enjoyed
freedom of worship and exercised some influence on
government policy.
On Nov. 12, 1660 Bunyan was brought before a local
magistrate & charged with holding a service not in
conformity with those of the Church of England.
 John Bunyan (1628-1688)
John Bunyan refused to promise that he would not
repeat the offense, so he was condemned in January
1661, and was imprisoned in the county jail.
In spite of the courageous efforts of his second wife to
release him, Bunyan remained in prison for 12 years.
During this imprisonment Bunyan wrote and
published his spiritual autobiography (Grace
Abounding, 1666).
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Bunyan’s release from prison came in March 1672
under Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence to the
Nonconformists.
The Bedford community had already chosen him
as their pastor in January, and a new meetinghouse
was obtained.
In May he received a license to preach together
with 25 other Nonconformist ministers
in Bedfordshire and the surrounding counties.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
When persecution was renewed Bunyan was again
imprisoned for illegal preaching, but only for
several months.
John Bunyan was released from jail in June 1677.

The Pilgrim’s Progress was published soon after

this, in February 1678.
It is probable that he had begun to write it not in
the second imprisonment but in the first, soon
after the composition of Grace Abounding.
 Literary style
Bunyan’s literary achievement, in his finest works, is by
no means that of a naively simple talent, as has been
the view of many of his critics.
His handling of language, colloquial or biblical, is
that of an accomplished artist.
He brings to his treatment of human behaviour both
shrewd awareness and moral subtlety.
He demonstrates a gift for endowing the conceptions
of evangelical theology with concrete life and acting
out the theological drama in terms of flesh and
blood.
Literary style
Bunyan’s effort to reach behind literary adornments
so as to obtain an absolutely naked rendering of
the truth about his own spiritual experience causes
him in Grace Abounding to forge a highly original
style.
In this style, which is rich in powerful physical
imagery, the inner life of the Christian is
described; body and soul are so involved that it is
impossible to separate bodily from mental suffering
in the description of his temptations.
 Literary style
The use of a highly subjective prose style to express
personal states of mind is Bunyan’s first creative
achievement.
But he also had at his disposal the more traditional style
he used in sermons, treatises, and scriptural exposition.
In the allegories some of his greatest imaginative
successes are due to his dreamlike, introspective style
with its subtle personal music.
But it is the workaday vigour & concreteness of the prose
technique practiced in the sermons which provide a firm
stylistic background to these imaginative flights.
 The Pilgrim’s Progress
Bunyan’s great allegorical tale was published in 1678.
It recapitulates in symbolic form the story of Bunyan’s
own conversion.
So, there is an intense, life-or-death quality about the
protagonist’s – Christian’s – pilgrimage to the Celestial
City in the first part of the book.
This sense of urgency is established in the first scene as
Christian in the City of Destruction reads the Bible
and breaks out with his lamentable cry, “What shall I
do?”
The Pilgrim’s Progress
This sense is maintained by the combats along
the road with giants and monsters such as
Apollyon and Giant Despair, who embody
spiritual terrors.

The voices and demons of the Valley of the

Shadow of Death are a direct transcription of
Bunyan’s own obsessive fears during his
conversion.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Episodes of stirring action like these alternate with
more stationary passages.
There are various conversations between the
pilgrims and those they encounter on the road,
some pious and some providing light relief when
hypocrites like Talkative and Ignorance are
exposed.
The halts at places of refreshment like the
Delectable Mountains or the meadow by the River of
Life evoke an unearthly spiritual beauty.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
The narrative of The Pilgrim’s Progress may seem
episodic, but Calvinist theology provides a firm
underlying ground plan.
Only Christ, the Wicket Gate, admits Christian
into the right road, and before he can reach it he
has to be shown his error.
Quite early in his journey Christian loses his
burden of sin at the Cross, so he now knows that
he has received the free pardon of Christ.
 The Pilgrim’s Progress
This initiation of grace is not the end of the drama
but the beginning.
Christian, and the companions who join him,
Faithful and Hopeful, are fixed in the path of
salvation, so that it is the horrors of the
temptations they have to undergo that engage the
reader’s attention.
The reader views Christian’s agonized striving
through his own eyes and shares Christian’s
uncertainty about the outcome.
 The Pilgrim’s Progress
Though conscientiously symbolic throughout, the
narrative of The Pilgrim’s Progress does not lose the
feel of common life.
In the character sketches & humorous passages scattered
throughout the book, Bunyan’s genius for realistic
observation prevents the conversion allegory from
becoming too inward and obsessed.
Bunyan displays a sharp eye for behaviour and a sardonic
sense of humour in his portrayals of such characters as
Ignorance and Talkative.
And finally, Christian himself is a transcript from life.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Bunyan, the physician of souls with a shrewd eye
for backsliders, had faithfully observed his own
spiritual growth.

The Pilgrim’s Progress was instantly popular with

all social classes upon its publication, though it
was perhaps the last great expression of the folk
tradition of the common people before the
divisive effects of modern enlightened education
began to be felt.
 Later life and works of John Bunyan
Bunyan’s fame as a preacher also increased with his
literary reputation, he also preached in Congregational
churches in London.
Bunyan followed up the success of The Pilgrim’s
Progress with other works.
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680) – more like a
realistic novel than an allegory in its portrait of the
unrelievedly evil tradesman Mr. Badman.
The book gives an insight into the problems of money
and marriage.
 Later life and works of John Bunyan
 The Holy War (1682) – Bunyan’s second allegory, has a
carefully wrought epic structure.
 The town of Mansoul is besieged by the hosts of the devil, is
relieved by the army of Emanuel, and is later undermined
by further diabolic attacks & plots against his rule.
 The metaphor works on several levels:
 (a) it represents the conversion and backslidings of the
individual soul,
 (b) as well as the story of mankind from the Fall through to
the Redemption and the Last Judgment;
 (c) there is even a more precise historical allegory relating to
the persecution of Nonconformists under Charles II.
 Later life and works of John Bunyan
The Pilgrim’s Progress, Second Part (1684) – tells the
story of the pilgrimage of Christian’s wife,
Christiana, and her children to the Celestial City.
This book gives a more social and humorous
picture of the Christian life than the First Part and
shows Bunyan lapsing from high drama into
comedy.
The great concluding passage on the summoning of
the pilgrims to cross the River of Death is perhaps the
finest single thing Bunyan ever wrote.
Later life and works of John Bunyan

One of Bunyan’s most interesting later

volumes is the children’s book of poems - A
Book for Boys and Girls (1686).

Bunyan died in 1688, in London, after one

of his preaching visits, and was buried in
Bunhill Fields, the Nonconformists’
traditional burying ground.
 John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Until the decline of religious faith & the great increase in
books of popular instruction in the 19th century, The
Pilgrim’s Progress, like the Bible, was to be found in
every English home.
In literary estimation, however, Bunyan remained
relatively underappreciated.
During XVIII century, though, his greatness was
acknowledged by Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson.
Later literary historians noted his indirect influence on
the XVIII-century novel, particularly the introspective
fiction of Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
After the Romantic movement John Bunyan was
recognized as a type of natural genius & placed
alongside Homer and Robert Burns.
The genius of The Pilgrim’s Progress still
remains valid.
Nothing illustrates better the profound symbolic
truth of this noted work than its continuing ability,
even in translation, to evoke responses in readers
belonging to widely separated cultural traditions.
Famous literary inspiration
Vanity Fair (1847-8) – a novel of early 19th-century
English society by William Makepeace Thackeray.

The novel takes its title from the place designated as

the centre of human corruption in John Bunyan’s
allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).

Bunyan's powerful metaphor of Vanity Fair was

transformed from an emblem of sin & persecution
into a showcase for celebrity, wealth and power.
Thank you for your attention!