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Bunyan and Gender
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John Bunyan’s writings have traditionally invited critical readings focusing on gender issues. With the scholarly recovery of the writings of radical sectarian women during the 1650s and 1660s and renewed study of libertine sexuality in the Restoration, our understanding of Bunyan’s representation of gender hierarchy and gender roles in his writings has become more complex. On the one hand, as a minister, he insisted on conformity to a biblically based gender hierarchy, and in works like The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680) he condemned the fashionable display of sexuality. On the other hand, Bunyan conceptualized the nature of the human relationship with God as requiring men to perform feminine roles and women to take on masculine traits.
Title: Bunyan and Gender
Description:
John Bunyan’s writings have traditionally invited critical readings focusing on gender issues.
With the scholarly recovery of the writings of radical sectarian women during the 1650s and 1660s and renewed study of libertine sexuality in the Restoration, our understanding of Bunyan’s representation of gender hierarchy and gender roles in his writings has become more complex.
On the one hand, as a minister, he insisted on conformity to a biblically based gender hierarchy, and in works like The Life and Death of Mr.
Badman (1680) he condemned the fashionable display of sexuality.
On the other hand, Bunyan conceptualized the nature of the human relationship with God as requiring men to perform feminine roles and women to take on masculine traits.
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