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 and concreteness of the prose techniquepracticed in the sermons which provide a firm stylistic background to these imaginative flights. From The Encyclopedia Britanica
Image taken from http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/bailey/bunyan.htm
Bunyan
Links
Works
Besides his extensive allegories, Bunyan was also a prolific author of tracts, sermons, and poems. Included here are only the works read by Dr. Rearick. For a full list click here.
The following autobiographical information was drawn from the Encyclopedia
Britanica on-line
His
Life
(Born. November 1628, Elstow, Bedfordshire, Eng.Died. Aug. 31, 1688,
London), celebrated English minister and preacher, author of The Pilgrim's
Progress (1678), the book that was the most characteristic expression
of
the Puritan religious outlook. His other works include doctrinal and
controversial writings; a spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding (1666);
and the allegory The Holy War (1682).
Bunyan, the son of a brazier, or traveling tinker, was brought up "among
a
multitude of poor plowmen's children" in the heart of England's agricultural
Midlands. He learned to read and write at a local grammar school, but he
probably left school early to learn the family trade. Bunyan's mind and
imagination were formed in these early days by influences other than those
of formal education. He absorbed the popular tales of adventure that
appeared in chapbooks and were sold at fairs like the great one held at
Stourbridge near Cambridge (it provided the inspiration for Vanity Fair
in
The Pilgrim's Progress). Though his 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, and John Foxe's The
Book of Martyrs. Above all he steeped himself in the English Bible;
the
Authorized Version was but 30 years old when he was a boy of 12.
Bunyan speaks in his autobiography of being troubled by terrifying
dreams. It may be that there was a pathological side to the nervous
intensity of these fears; in the religious crisis of his early manhood
his
sense of guilt took the form of delusions. But it seems to have been
abnormal sensitiveness combined with the tendency to exaggeration that
caused him to look back on himself in youth as "the very ringleader of
all . .
. that kept me company into all manner of vice and ungodliness."
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 he was mustered in a
Parliamentary levy and sent to reinforce the garrison at Newport Pagnell.
The governor was Sir Samuel Luke, immortalized as the Presbyterian
knight of the title in Samuel Butler's Hudibras. Bunyan remained
in
Newport until July 1647 and probably saw little fighting.
His military service, even if uneventful, brought him in touch with the
seething religious life of the left-wing sects within Oliver Cromwell's
army,
the preaching captains, and those Quakers, Seekers, and Ranters who
were beginning to question all religious authority except that of the
individual conscience. In this atmosphere Bunyan became acquainted
with
the leading ideas of the Puritan sectaries, who believed that the striving
for
religious truth meant an obstinate personal search, relying on free grace
revealed to the individual, and condemning all forms of public organization.
(see also Index: New Model Army, Puritanism)
Some time after his discharge from the army (in July 1647) and before
1649, Bunyan married. He says in his autobiography, Grace Abounding,
that he and his first wife "came together as poor as poor might be, not
having so much household--stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both." His
wife brought him two evangelical books as her only dowry. Their first
child, a blind daughter, Mary, was baptized in July 1650. Three more
children, Elizabeth, John, and Thomas, were born to Bunyan's first wife
before her death in 1658. Elizabeth, too, was baptized in the parish church
there in 1654, though by that time her father had been baptized by
immersion as a member of the Bedford Separatist church.
Bunyan's conversion to Puritanism was a gradual process in the years
following his marriage (1650-55); it is dramatically described in his
autobiography. After an initial period of Anglican conformity in which
he
went regularly to church, he gave up, slowly and grudgingly, his favourite
recreations of dancing and bell ringing and sports on the village green
and
began to concentrate on his inner life. Then came agonizing temptations
to
spiritual despair lasting for several years. The "storms" of temptation,
as he
calls them, buffeted him with almost physical violence; voices urged him
to
blaspheme; the texts of Scriptures, which seemed to him to threaten
damnation, took on personal shape and "did pinch him very sore." Finally
one morning he believed that he had surrendered to these voices of Satan
and had betrayed Christ: "Down I fell as a bird that is shot from the tree."
In his psychopathic isolation he presents all the features of the divided
mind
of the maladjusted as they have been analyzed in the 20th century.
Bunyan, however, had a contemporary psychological instrument for the
diagnosis of his condition: the pastoral theology of 17th-century Calvinism,
which interpreted the grim doctrine of election and predestination in terms
of the real needs of souls, the evidence of spiritual progress in them,
and
the covenant of God's grace. Both techniques, that of the modern analyst
and that of the Puritan preacher, have in common the aim of recovering
the integrity of the self; and this was what Bunyan achieved as he
emerged, from his period of spiritual darkness, gradually beginning to
feel
that his sin was "not unto death" and that there were texts to comfort
as
well as to terrify. He was aided in his recovery by his association with
the
Bedford Separatist church and its dynamic leader, John Gifford. He
entered into full communion about 1655.
The Bedford community practiced adult Baptism by immersion, but it was
an open-communion church, admitting all who professed "faith in Christ
and holiness of life." Bunyan soon proved his talents as a lay preacher.
Fresh from his own spiritual troubles, he was fitted to warn and console
others: "I went myself in Chains to preach to them in Chains, and carried
that Fire in my own Conscience that I persuaded them to beware of." He
was also active in visiting and exhorting church members, but his main
activity in 1655-60 was in controversy with the early Quakers, both in
public debate up and down the market towns of Bedfordshire and in his
first printed works, Some Gospel Truths Opened (1656) and A
Vindication of Some Gospel Truths Opened (1657). The Quakers and
the open-communion Baptists were rivals for the religious allegiance of
the
"mechanics," or small tradesmen and artificers, in both town and country.
Bunyan soon became recognized as a leader among the sectaries.
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, at Lower Samsell in
South Bedfordshire, Bunyan was brought before a local magistrate and,
under an old Elizabethan act, charged with holding a service not in
conformity with those of the Church of England. He refused to give an
assurance that he would not repeat the offense, was condemned at the
assizes in January 1661, and was imprisoned in the county jail. In spite
of
the courageous efforts of his second wife (he had married again in 1659)
to have his case brought up at the assizes, he remained in prison for
12
years. A late 17th-century biography, added to the early editions of
Grace
Abounding, reveals that he relieved his family by making and selling "long
Tagg'd laces"; prison conditions were lenient enough for him to be let
out at
times to visit friends and family and to address meetings. (see also Index:
Nonconformist)
During this imprisonment Bunyan wrote and published his spiritual
autobiography (Grace Abounding, 1666). 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. His nickname
"Bishop Bunyan" suggests that he became the organizing genius in the
area. When persecution was renewed he was again imprisoned for illegal
preaching; the circumstances of this imprisonment have remained more
obscure than those of the first, though it does not appear to have lasted
longer than six months. A bond of surety for his release, dated June 1677,
has survived, so it is likely that this second detention was in the first
half of
that year. Since 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, and when the examination of his inner life contained
in that
book was still strong.
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, and 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.
Bunyan thus presents a paradox, since the impulse that originally drove
him to write was purely to celebrate his faith and to convert others, and
like other Puritans he was schooled to despise the adornments of style
and
to treat literature as a means to an end. 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. He feels "a clogging and
a heat at my
breast-bone as if my bowels would have burst out"; a preacher's call to
abandon the sin of idle pastimes "did benumb the sinews of my best
delights"; and he can say of one of the texts of scripture that seemed
to
him to spell his damnation that it "stood like a mill-post at my back."
The
attempt to communicate the existential crisis of the human person without
style had created a style of its own.
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 and concreteness of the prose technique
practiced in the sermons which provide a firm stylistic background to these
imaginative flights.
Bunyan's great allegorical tale was published by Nathaniel Ponder in 1678.
Because it recapitulates in symbolic form the story of Bunyan's own
conversion, there is an intense, life-or-death quality about Christian's
pilgrimage to the Heavenly 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 in his book (the Bible) and breaks out with his
lamentable cry, "What shall I do?" It 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
and neurotic fears during his conversion. Episodes of stirring action like
these alternate with more stationary passages, and 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. (see also Index: allegory)
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 in being impressed by the pompous snob Worldly
Wiseman, who stands for mere negative conformity to moral and social
codes. 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 and
is numbered among the elect. It might seem that all the crises of the
pilgrimage were past, yet 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.
Though conscientiously symbolic throughout, the narrative of The Pilgrim's
Progress does not lose the feel of common life. In the character sketches
and 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 reprobates as
Ignorance and Talkative; these moral types are endowed with the liveliness
of individuals by a deft etching in of a few dominant features and gestures.
And finally, Christian himself is a transcript from life; 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.
Bunyan continued to tend the needs of the Bedford church and the
widening group of East Anglian churches associated with it. As his fame
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. His The Life and Death of Mr. Badman
(1680) is more like a realistic novel than an allegory in its portrait
of the
unrelievedly evil and unrepentant tradesman Mr. Badman. The book gives
an insight into the problems of money and marriage when the Puritans
were settling down after the age of persecution and beginning to find their
social role as an urban middle class. (see also Index: "Life and Death
of
Mr. Badman, The")
The Holy War (1682), Bunyan's second allegory, has a carefully wrought
epic structure and is correspondingly lacking in the spontaneous inward
note of The Pilgrim's Progress. 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 and plots against his rule. The
metaphor works on several levels; it represents the conversion and
backslidings of the individual soul, as well as the story of mankind from
the
Fall through to the Redemption and the Last Judgment; there is even a
more precise historical level of allegory relating to the persecution of
Nonconformists under Charles II. 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, but 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. (see also Index: "Holy
War, The")
In spite of his ministerial responsibilities Bunyan found time to publish
a
large number of doctrinal and controversial works in the last 10 years
of
his life. He also composed rough but workmanlike verse of religious
exhortation; one of his most interesting later volumes is the children's
book
A Book for Boys and Girls (1686), vigorous poems serving as comments
on emblematic pictures.
Bunyan died in 1688, in London, after one of his preaching visits, and
was
buried in Bunhill Fields, the Nonconformists' traditional burying ground.
Until the decline of religious faith and 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 and was known to every
ordinary reader. In literary estimation, however, Bunyan remained beyond
the pale of polite literature during the 18th century, though his greatness
was acknowledged by Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson. After the
Romantic movement he was recognized as a type of the natural genius and
placed alongside Homer and Robert Burns. Twentieth-century scholarship
has made it possible to see how much he owed to the tradition of homiletic
prose and to Puritan literary genres already developed when he began to
write. But the sublime tinker remains sublime, if less isolated from his
fellows than was formerly thought; the genius of The Pilgrim's Progress
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.
R.S. Roger Sharrock (d. 1991). Professor of English Language and
Literature, King's College, University of London, 1968-81. Author of
John Bunyan and others; editor of Oxford Bunyan.
About Bunyan Himself
has this and other works by Bunyan at HTTP://WWW.CCEL.ORG
This work is also available on our mainframe
About Grace Abounding
A
Full List of Bunyan's Works
Here is a complete listing of Bunyan's works laid out
as if in three volumes. This list can be found at www.johnbunyan.org
and the text for most of these are located there as well.
VOLUME FIRST.
VOLUME SECOND.
VOLUME THIRD.