John Bunyan was a well-known 17th century English writer, Puritan preacher, and minister. His literary fame lies in the construction of the religious allegory, “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. Furthermore, he wrote about 60 works encompassing sermons and religious preaching.
Bunyan was from the Elstow village near Bedfordshire. In his teenage years, Bunyan joined the Parliamentary Army to serve in the English Civil War. Three years later, he returned to his native town and continued the family trade of tinker.
After his marriage, Bunyan joined a nonconformist group in Bedford and became a preacher. This preaching led to 12 years of imprisonment for him. It is because when the monarch was restored and non-conformists were restricted, Bunyan did not give up on his beliefs.
During imprisonment, he completed a spiritual autobiographical work “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners”. He also worked on “The Pilgrim’s Progress” in prison. However, it was not published for several years after the end of his punishment.
This book was a representation of the Puritan religious thinking of Bunyan. It got the honor of one of the most published books in English history. Even 250 years after the demise of John Bunyan, “The Pilgrim Progress” was edited 1300 times by 1938.
Another significant work of Bunyan is an allegory, “The Holy War” that he wrote in 1682. Furthermore, he wrote certain controversial works based on fixed doctrines for which he was criticized.
Bunyan’s death is still remembered by different churches as he remained a high preacher during his life.
The Church of England honors him on 30th August with a Lesser Festival. While the US Episcopal Church celebrates Bunyan’s life on 29th August. However, the Anglican Church of Australia and some other Anglican churches remember Bunyan on 31st August, his death day.
John Bunyan’s Biography:
John Bunyan, the known English literary and religious figure was born to Thomas and Margaret Bunyan in 1628. He was born in the Elstow parish, Bedfordshire.
Bunyan’s baptism took place on 30th November 1628, which traces his birth, although the birth date is unknown.
Family Trade:
Thomas Bunyan was a tinker and he would wander from place to place repairing cutlery for people. His grandfather was also a small trader which gave a good background to Bunyan’s growth.
He received some elementary education and learned his father’s tinker work also.
Life Experiences:
In his work “Grace Abounding”, Bunyan recounts certain biographical instances in which he notes how he learned from his father the act of swearing. He would also experience nightmares and would read stories from day to day chap-books.
Bunyan’s mother and sister died in 1644 and shortly afterward he was enrolled in the Parliamentary Army.
As he turned 16 years old, new recruitments were needed from Bedfordshire in the first phase of the Civil War. Therefore, he offered his services in the war also.
Military Services:
Bunyan mentions an incident from the war in “Grace Abounding” also. Furthermore, the military services and the condition of war gave him a deep understanding of military knowledge.
He used this language in “The Holy War”. Also, he acquired the experience of conflicting religious parties and radical sects he observed in Newport Pagnell town.
In 1647, three years after providing his services to the army, Bunyan returned to Elstow to continue his father’s trade. However, his father had remarried and had more children; Bunyan separated from Bunyan’s End and got shifted to a cottage in Elstow High Street.
Marriage:
John Bunyan got married two years after leaving the military. Though his wife is not known, he referred to her as a pious young lady.
In 1950, they had their first daughter but she turned out to be blind. Later, they had three more kids, Thomas, Elizabeth, and John.
Religion:
According to Bunyan, he had an enjoyable youth as he would dance, party, and play games even on Sundays. As it was considered Lord’s Day as a humble day, reveling was forbidden. One Sunday, Bunyan also took part in the church procession and listened to the sermon by heart.
According to him, that evening he heard God’s voice advising him to become a pious man. After several years of mental conflict upon religion, one day while traveling as a tinker, John overheard some members of Bedford Free Church.
They were discussing religious matters that motivated Bunyan to join their church. With the influence of some group members, Bunyan began preaching to the church and countryside people.
Writing Career:
In 1656, Bunyan moved to St Cuthbert’s Street in Bedford along with his family. There he wrote his first work, “Gospel Truths Opened”. The book was based on a dispute between two opposing religious groups, Ranters and Quakers. Till his death, Bunyan wrote and published 42 more titles.
In 1658, Bunyan’s first wife died leaving their four children in his care. However, he remarried the next year with a teenage girl, Elizabeth.
Restoration of Monarchy:
In 1660, the restoration of monarchy happened. The former freedom in the preaching of the Bedford Meeting was no longer there. Bunyan was also arrested and was imprisoned for 12 years, but he remained resolute in his mission.
In the prison, he wrote “Grace Abounding” and published in 1666. Also, he began working on the allegory, “The Pilgrim’s Progress”.
Religious Tolerance:
In 1972, the government showed religious toleration for nonconformists. Therefore, a declaration of indulgence was issued and Bunyan was released in May 1972 to preach under this license. However, he did not return to tinker work. Instead, he preferred to become a full-time preacher and writer.
The Pilgrim’s Progress:
In 1678, Bunyan published “Pilgrim’s Progress” by the publisher Nathaniel Ponder.
The book gained immediate success but earned more for the publisher than Bunyan. It is a religious allegory about the burden of sins upon humankind.
Scandal and Allegories:
In 1674, Bunyan was stuck in a scandal of giving a horse ride to a young lady, Agnes Beaumont, and killing her father by converting the lady to his religious sect.
In 1680, he wrote another allegory “The Life and Death of Mr. Badman”. The next allegory that followed was “The Holy War” in 1682.
Death:
Later, while returning from resolving a father-son duel to his friend’s house in London, he was stuck in a storm and fell ill. Bunyan died on 31st August 1688.
He was buried in a tomb related to his friend, Strudwick in a non-conformist burial place in Bunhill Fields, London.
In 1692, Bunyan’s friend Charles Doe, with the cooperation of his widow, published twelve works including sermons.
After six years, Doe published Bunyan’s “The Heavenly Footman”. In 1765, another work “Relation of My Imprisonment” surfaced.
John Bunyan’s Writing Style:
John Bunyan, being a religious preacher and staunch Puritan, wrote most of his works on religious topics. Therefore, his style has an inherent didactic tone.
He points out the wrongs of the ordinary lot and teaches them how to stay upright and pious. Moreover, he has a simple style but his handling of complex religious matters is very artistic and creative.
Simple Talent and Artistic Height:
According to many critics, Bunyan’s literary achievement in his most refined works lies in his naïve simplicity of work. For instance, the writer handles every kind of language, which can be divine or colloquial, in an artistically accomplished way.
For example, the celebrated work of Bunyan, “The Pilgrim’s Progress” engages the readers in active participation by judging their religious knowledge of the Bible by alluding to ‘Gospel-strains’.
He constructs his work in such a way that it is simple and informative at the same time. In a way, Bunyan tests the piety and conscience of the readers by weaving naïve tales of clear cut directions in allegorical figures.
Didacticism:
John Bunyan treats human behavior in moral delicacies and an astute awareness of the soul. He demonstrates the Evangelical conceptions of theology in comparison with physical life and highlights the importance of Puritan values with his unceasing efforts.
For example, in “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Bunyan preaches his religious values through the allegorical figure of Christian. He goes out of his hometown, the City of Destruction to the Celestial City of heaven. In the way, he patiently endures many obstructions and reaches his ultimate goal with a strong faith.
In this way, the book divides the world into two categories, the saved ones and the damned. The work is a direct religious allegory that teaches Christian readers how to save one’s soul from damnation and get rid of one’s sins.
In his other work “Grace Abounding”; he again gives an autobiographical note of the personal experiences of childhood and adult life and his conversion to the true faith. His life provides instruction for the audience to stay attached to the Puritan values, no matter what happens.
Allegory:
In most of his works, Bunyan uses an allegorical style of writing to serve his didactic purpose of spiritualism. Even the characters and places are given allegorical names and are personified. For example, the most celebrated work, “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is a religious allegory.
The protagonist is ‘Christian’ who sets out from his ‘City of Destruction’ to the ‘Celestial City’ in a dream. He is followed by his friends ‘Obstinate’ and ‘Pliable’. However, they both cut their journey short.
When Christian falls in the ‘Slough of Despond’, he is supported out by ‘Help’. In this way, his difficult journey continues. These figures and places are direct representatives of the ordinary life of every Christian man who struggles against his inner conflict of spiritualism.
Similarly, “The Holy War”, “Divine Emblems”, and “Grace Abounding” are also the allegorical works of Bunyan.
Original Style:
Bunyan’s writing style is paradoxical in its very construction. As he accepted Puritanism, the original impulse behind Bunyan’s literary career was to celebrate his beliefs and convert the ordinary lot to his faith. Therefore, literature for him was a means to achieve an end and he despised the embellishment of language in his works.
For this reason, Bunyan goes beyond the literary adornment and adopts the original and pure way of rendering the spiritual truth of his experiences in “Grace Abounding”.
This work has a completely original style of writing with simple language to give the readers a better understanding of Bunyan’s stance.
Inner Life of Christians:
As a religious writer, Bunyan’s works focus on the inner lives of Christian people in the social context by using Christian characters struggling with their inner and outer worlds.
In tracing out the temptations that befall Christian people, Bunyan weaves the body and soul in such an intertwined relationship that it becomes difficult to separate bodily conflicts from mental sufferings.
This inner conflict of body and soul is depicted in “Grace Abounding”. For example, the narrator feels ‘a clogging and a heat at my breast-bone as if my bowels would have burst out’. It is because of the sins of past life that numbed ‘my best delights’.
It seemed as if the spell of damnation like a mill-post stood ‘at my back’, according to the narrator. In this way, the existential crisis of a Christian soul is presented in a simple form of style that makes it unique in itself.
Subjective Style:
Bacon inevitably uses the subjective style of writing in his works. It is to convey a personal state of mind in the quest for truth, which makes Bunyan’s works a depiction of artistic mastery.
His subjective style is evident from Bunyan’s account of his journey through a sinful life towards spiritualism in “Grace Abounding”. This spiritual quest can be seen in “The Pilgrim’s Progress” also.
However, he also uses a more traditional style in certain religious speeches and sermons. In allegorical works, Bunyan weaves imaginative flights into the spiritual world in an introspective style. However, the concreteness of his sermons provides a fixed stylistic context to his imaginative works.
Themes:
John Bunyan wrote his works for the spiritual purpose to convey the message of religion to his people.
Being a writer of the 17th century, religion held an upper place in his life. Therefore, the works of Bunyan feature the themes of spirituality, religious beliefs, temptations and redemption, and other such perspectives.
Spiritual Concern:
Bunyan focuses on the spiritual concerns of a common lot from different perspectives in his works. For example, in a conversation between Mr. Wiseman and Attentive, two characters in the realistic allegory The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, there is a discussion about the degradation of a vise young life to wretched adulthood.
Also, “The Holy War” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress” feature a spiritual struggle in the form of a quest of characters against evil forces. It also features the fall of humanity, accepting their salvation through the sacrifice of Christ.
On a moral level, the novel shows a lifelong struggle and stress against sin that every individual goes through.
Sin and Redemption:
In the struggle of spiritual growth and finding one’s soul, Bunyan’s characters go through a continuous war against sins and they yearn for redemption. For example, in “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Christian’s back is loaded with sins and he crosses many temptations and hurdles to reach his redemption. In the end, the burden of sins is lifted and he is saved.
Likewise, in the allegory “The Holy War”, Bunyan weaves a story of human waging against sins. For example, the town Mansoul (Man’s soul) is besieged by the devils.
Through the course of the novel, the city is lost to devils and is taken again that shows the quest of man’s soul against sins, its imprisonment by falsehood, and then the victory over those evil spirits.
Coping with Spiritual Fear in Faith:
According to Bunyan, ‘fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom’ (The Pilgrim’s Progress). In “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Christian is filled with fear of God and hope for redemption when he observes all the visions of heavenly power.
In Bunyan’s view, the fear of God is different from the fear of being a coward.
For instance, the fear of God makes a person nearer to God and fills him with heavenly chastity. While the fear of the physical world makes him a sinner and does not let him overcome the difficulties of life.
In the example, Christian overpowers the fear of death and the otherworld; therefore, he reaches the ultimate reality of God.
Isolation from Social Life:
As discussed earlier, Bunyan not only focuses on the religious aspect of human life but also the communal value of this religiosity. As in “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Christian leaves his hometown to find the ultimate truth of life and death, he is left alone in the middle he meets quite scornful and ignorant behavior from the people.
Likewise, in The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, the writer recounts the everyday life of Puritans being alienated from the normal social context after the restoration of the monarchy.
Settlement of Puritans:
Despite the purely religious background of Bunyan’s works, there is an insight into the social and economic conditions of the people of his sect in the contemporary era. For example, in the story of Mr. Badman, John Bunyan keenly depicts the financial troubles of the Puritan people after the restoration period in 1660.
These people were struggling in their marriage systems and had frequent earning issues after persecution. Also, they were finding their place as an urban middle class in the altered status of their life.
Legacy:
John Bunyan’s great fame lies in his work “The Pilgrim’s Progress” which is a Christian Spiritual allegory. According to Charles Doe, the book printed about 100,000 copies 4 years after Bunyan’s death.
In the 18th-century, Bunyan’s popularity decreased considerably and his simple style of writing did not remain quite captivating. However, with the revival of the Romantic era, Bunyan’s popularity returned.
In 1930, the writer, Robert Southey wrote a detailed biography of Bunyan along with an edition of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” that brought back his lost favor.
He also influenced many other great writers like Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and George Bernard Shaw.