- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures and Table
- List of Contributors
- General Editor’s Preface
- Introduction
- Editorial Note
- Note on the British Currency before Decimalization
- 1 Authorship, Publication, Reception (1): 1470–1660
- 2 Authorship, Publication, Reception (2): 1660–1750
- 3 Cross-Sections (1): 1516–1520
- 4 Cross-Sections (2): 1596–1600
- 5 Cross-Sections (3): 1666–1670
- 6 Cross-Sections (4): 1716–1720
- 7 Fiction and the Origins of Print
- 8 English Fiction and the Ancient Novel
- 9 Chivalric Romance and Novella Collections
- 10 Euphuism and Courtly Fiction
- 11 Nashe and Satire
- 12 Elizabethan Popular Romance and the Popular Novel
- 13 ‘The conjunction cannot be hurtful’?
- 14 Utopian Fiction
- 15 Royalist Romance?
- 16 Picaresque and Rogue Fiction
- 17 Cervantes, Anti-Romance, and the Novella
- 18 Rabelaisian Comedy and Satire
- 19 Bunyan and Religious Allegory
- 20 Formal Experimentation and Theories of Fiction
- 21 Non-Fictional Discourses and the Novel
- 22 Finding Their Accounts
- 23 Classical French Fiction and the Restoration Novel
- 24 Epistolary Fiction
- 25 Pornography and the Novel
- 26 Restoration Theatre and the Novel
- 27 Exploration, Expansion, and the Early Novel
- 28 Arabian Nights and Oriental Spies
- 29 The Rise of the Irish Novel
- 30 Amatory and Scandal Fiction
- 31 Defoe, Journalism, and the Early English Novel
- 32 Swift, Satire, and the Novel
- 33 The <i>Pamela</i> Debate
- 34 <i>Clarissa</i> and <i>Tom Jones</i>
- 35 ‘Moral Romance’ and the Novel at Mid-Century
- Bibliography of Secondary Sources
- Index
Bunyan and Religious Allegory
Bunyan and Religious Allegory
- Chapter:
- (p.310) 19 Bunyan and Religious Allegory
- Source:
- The Oxford History of the Novel in English
- Author(s):
Michael Davies
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter examines the relationship between John Bunyan’s religious allegories and eighteenth-century English novels. Though it was one of the most widely read works during the period, The Pilgrim’s Progress had a distinctly uneven reputation among readers and writers of polite eighteenth-century literature. In contrast to novels of domestic realism, Bunyan’s religious allegory insistently directs readers outwards to the Bible and otherworldly salvation while simultaneously enacting the experience of faith on the page. However, The Pilgrim’s Progress does exhibit formal characteristics of realism with its homely dialogue and focus on individual interiority, and it remains troubled throughout by its forsaken relation to worldly domesticity. Though his subsequent allegories moved even further from narrative realism and his canonical importance was only established in the nineteenth century, Bunyan still identified a narrative space and market appeal for the kinds of domestic crisis and drama that would become central to the novel.
Keywords: John Bunyan, influence, allegory, reading, the Bible, typology, religious literature, realism, domestic, novel
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures and Table
- List of Contributors
- General Editor’s Preface
- Introduction
- Editorial Note
- Note on the British Currency before Decimalization
- 1 Authorship, Publication, Reception (1): 1470–1660
- 2 Authorship, Publication, Reception (2): 1660–1750
- 3 Cross-Sections (1): 1516–1520
- 4 Cross-Sections (2): 1596–1600
- 5 Cross-Sections (3): 1666–1670
- 6 Cross-Sections (4): 1716–1720
- 7 Fiction and the Origins of Print
- 8 English Fiction and the Ancient Novel
- 9 Chivalric Romance and Novella Collections
- 10 Euphuism and Courtly Fiction
- 11 Nashe and Satire
- 12 Elizabethan Popular Romance and the Popular Novel
- 13 ‘The conjunction cannot be hurtful’?
- 14 Utopian Fiction
- 15 Royalist Romance?
- 16 Picaresque and Rogue Fiction
- 17 Cervantes, Anti-Romance, and the Novella
- 18 Rabelaisian Comedy and Satire
- 19 Bunyan and Religious Allegory
- 20 Formal Experimentation and Theories of Fiction
- 21 Non-Fictional Discourses and the Novel
- 22 Finding Their Accounts
- 23 Classical French Fiction and the Restoration Novel
- 24 Epistolary Fiction
- 25 Pornography and the Novel
- 26 Restoration Theatre and the Novel
- 27 Exploration, Expansion, and the Early Novel
- 28 Arabian Nights and Oriental Spies
- 29 The Rise of the Irish Novel
- 30 Amatory and Scandal Fiction
- 31 Defoe, Journalism, and the Early English Novel
- 32 Swift, Satire, and the Novel
- 33 The <i>Pamela</i> Debate
- 34 <i>Clarissa</i> and <i>Tom Jones</i>
- 35 ‘Moral Romance’ and the Novel at Mid-Century
- Bibliography of Secondary Sources
- Index
