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Bunyan and Religious Allegory
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This chapter re-examines John Bunyan's religious allegories, and in particular The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), as works that complicate what might be thought of as novelistic habits of reading and writing. It seeks to approach them not simply as precursors to the novel but as radically different kinds of fiction. One might wish to treat Bunyan's allegories as ‘entertainment machines’ similar to other kinds of early modern literature, such as chivalric romance or the rogue biography, but they resist and arguably seek to reform ‘the fiction reading impulse’. To this degree, Bunyan's major allegorical works are sometimes like novels and at the same time nothing like them. Should Bunyan still hold a place in the history of the novel, it could be despite rather than because of the narrative methods he adopts.
Title: Bunyan and Religious Allegory
Description:
This chapter re-examines John Bunyan's religious allegories, and in particular The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), as works that complicate what might be thought of as novelistic habits of reading and writing.
It seeks to approach them not simply as precursors to the novel but as radically different kinds of fiction.
One might wish to treat Bunyan's allegories as ‘entertainment machines’ similar to other kinds of early modern literature, such as chivalric romance or the rogue biography, but they resist and arguably seek to reform ‘the fiction reading impulse’.
To this degree, Bunyan's major allegorical works are sometimes like novels and at the same time nothing like them.
Should Bunyan still hold a place in the history of the novel, it could be despite rather than because of the narrative methods he adopts.
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