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John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678

John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678. Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679 John Bunyan, 1628-1688 John Dryden, 1631-1700 John Locke, 1632-1704 Mary Astell, 1666-1731 Daniel Defoe, 1660-1731. I. Locating Bunyan on the Restoration map.

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John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678

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  1. John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678 Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679 John Bunyan, 1628-1688 John Dryden, 1631-1700 John Locke, 1632-1704 Mary Astell, 1666-1731 Daniel Defoe, 1660-1731

  2. I. Locating Bunyan on the Restoration map • A. Bunyan was in a different social-political-religious group from that of Hobbes and Dryden. • 1. Lower social rank • 2. Dissenter or non-conformist • Acts of dissent • Preaching (which was forbidden) • Refusing to accept the Book of Common Prayer (which was required) • B. Bunyan wrote TPP in his 12 years in jail.

  3. II. What does the title page tell us? • Title page A. Key terms: • 1. Journey • 2. “Similitude of a Dream” • 3. “This world” vs “That which is to come” Source of image: http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/eebo/

  4. A.1. Journey: Metaphor for Experience • Definition of experience • Christian to Pliable:  “had even Obstinate himself, but felt what I have felt of the Powers, and Terrours of what is yet unseen, he would not thus lightly have give us the back” (14, emphasis added). • The book’s purpose: “This Book will make a Travailer of thee” ("Apology").

  5. A. 2:“Similitude of a dream”: allegory • a) Allegory: several definitions Allegory:  OEDdefinition [Notice references to Galatians.] • b) Bunyan’s allegory makes internal conditions visible as if they were acted out in a landscape or in some visible domestic space. • “the wilderness of this world” (10) • the “Slough of Despond” (16-17) • the unswept Parlor (30) • the man in the iron cage (34 ff). “I saw a Man . . . a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back” http://library.uncg.edu/depts/speccoll/exhibits/Blake/pilgrims_progress.html

  6. A. 3. This world vs that which is to come • 1. "Interpreter: For the things that are seen, are Temporal; but the things that are not seen, are Eternal. . . . But . . . since things present, and our fleshly appetite, are such near Neighbours one to another . . . " (32) • 2. Bunyan emphasizes the opposition between the carnal (bodily) senses and an inward capacity for spiritual seeing and understanding. • 3. Bunyan’s allegory solves the epistemological problem of the invisibility of spiritual (eternal) knowledge. • Spiritual knowledge is different from and higher than “carnal” knowledge.

  7. 3. This world vs that which is to come (cont.) • a) An alternative and competing frame of reference for inheritance: “I seek an inheritance . ..”(13) • (See “the lord of the place”[40] and later “Adam the First,” who tries to make the pilgrims his heirs [69] ) • b) An alternative psychology: Passion & Patience (31) • c) The status of Custom (40)

  8. A. 3 d. Detail from Apollyon & Christian by William Blake “scales like a Fish”; “Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear” (57) This episode combines the 17th. c. language of political allegiance with an apocalyptic understanding of a battle between God’s forces and the Devil’s. For Puritans, this great conflict reduces the significance of contemporary political issues and provides the context for them.

  9. III. The contrast between law and grace governs Bunyan’s imagination. • A. Law condemns everyone: “As many as are the works of the Law, are under the curse; for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (24). • B. Bunyan’s characterization of Mount Sinai, Legality, the bondwoman (Hagar) & Ishmael (20-24) creates an allegorical landscape of the soul’s experience. The soul must get beyond the law. • C. Bunyan’s use of the “bondwoman” is an example, within the allegory, of typological reading.

  10. III.C. Law & Grace provide the underpinnings of what became a Christian method of interpretation. • 1. What is typology? • 2. Paul’s example in Galatians of how Christians should read the Hebrew scriptures. • 3. Typological interpretation is compatible with but not the same as allegorical interpretation.

  11. Claude Lorrain (1600-1682): The Departure of Hagar & Ishmaelhttp://www.google.com/search?q=Hagar+and+Ishmael&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&btnG=Google+Search

  12. III. D. Paul’s direction for typological reading • Hagar, who was an Egyptian woman, becomes, in Paul’s system, a type or figure for the Jewish law or old covenant (Sinai). • Sarah, Abraham’s wife, is a type or figure for the new covenant (grace). • That is, Hagar, an Egyptian, foreshadows the old law or covenant that God made with the people of Israel. • And Sarah foreshadows the new covenant or grace. • Now look again at Bunyan’s use of the “bondwoman.”

  13. IV. Further Interpretation • 1. Law, grace, & the parlor (30-31) • 2. Christian loses his burden (37) • 3. Christian loses his “Roll” (42)

  14. V. Returning to the title page • Title: an oxymoron • Compare “itinerant epic” • Symbolic landscape is also rural England. • The “desired Countrey” requires turning one’s back on Restoration England—separating oneself from the world, a separation that has political as well as religious implications.

  15. VI. Your turn • What question do you think The Pilgrim’s Progress answers?

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