THE READING RHEUM: PILGRIM’S PROGRESS 1-2 (1678-1684)

 

Despite my having made a relatively recent reference in this post to John Bunyan’s 17^th-century Christian allegory, I never had any desire to read the thing. But the work was nominated by a local book club, so I gave it a go.

As I expected, PILGRIM’S PROGRESS was not stimulating in and of itself, but it does furnish me with some insights regarding its place in European Lit, not least because its two sections—published respectively in 1678 and 1684—have never been out of print, unlike the rest of Bunyan’s largely theological writings. Both parts take the form of a dream stemming from someone who may or may not be Bunyan. The first part’s narrative concerns a Christian seeker, literally named Christian, who leaves behind his wife and children in order to find his way to Heaven—though it’s not actually stated that he has died. Though death would be a fitting excuse for deserting one’s family, the allegory presents Christian’s actions as those of a living man, and thus emblematic of a good Christian’s priorities. I’ve read nothing about the genesis of Part 2. Yet since it concerns how Christian’s wife and children follow in his footsteps and also attain Heaven, I can’t help that one of Bunyan’s contemporaries gave the author some static about the immorality of family-desertion, even if Bunyan believed that Scripture justified the original act. So Part 2 is “the Rest of the Family Gets to Heaven,” with a narrative so close to the first one that it might be deemed a foretaste of Hollywood sequel-itis.

Since I found Bunyan’s religious philosophy shallow at best, the book’s primary interest to me is its place in the history of fantasy-literature. Bunyan, having been born in 1628, belonged to the generation after the reign of the Elizabethan playwrights. Some of these playwrights were staunch realists, like Ben Jonson, but others, like Marlowe and Shakespeare, had no problem with portraying fantasy-content on stage, and often in a much more freestyle manner than one got in the religious plays of the Middle Ages. Bunyan feels like a throwback to the era of Christian allegories like ‘Everyman,” and though there’s ample fantasy content in both parts of PROGRESS, figures like giants and demons are rendered nugatory since they take place within the confines of a dream. (In my system this would make the whole work “uncanny,” BTW.)

I’ve argued elsewhere that the 17^th century started out as a more realistic age, as exemplified by the successful reception of Cervantes’s 1605 DON QUIXOTE, a burlesque of the chivalric legends that had delighted previous generations. But PROGRESS may be an even more insidious attack on the noble knights of Arthur. Christian’s peregrinations usually consist of the seeker encountering false prophets, with names like “Mr. Legality” and “Mr. Worldly Wise,” who try to lure him from his path. But on one occasion, Christian dons armor and fights a similarly outfitted demon named Apollyon. The fact that Christian loses the fight, but remains on his path nonetheless, may have signified something to Bunyan that escapes me. Certainly Part 1 doesn’t emphasize the combative mode, but combative elements do surface again in Part 2. “Christiana” and her children encounter, as did her husband, giants and demons, but since they’re not able to fight, a knightly savior, “Great-Heart” sorts out the fiends in their stead. Neither section of PROGRESS is a combative work, but it may be that the scenes of violence—notably, one in which Great-Heart beheads the giant Despair-- may have played a role in the enduring popularity of PROGRESS. (A few centuries later, the author Philip Jose Farmer paid Great-Heart homage by inventing a new character, “Greatheart Silver,” for the pulp-oriented paperback series WEIRD HEROES.)

I had a lot of trouble making progress through PROGRESS, given that its philosophy is simplistic and its humor mostly confined to the funny names of the false prophets. The only section I really liked appeared in Part 1. Christian gets his armor, appropriately, from an armory, and in that holy sanctum the owners have stored a host of famous death-dealing weapons from the Old and New Testaments, such as the sling of David, “the hammer and nail with which Jael slew Sisera,” and Samson’s “jawbone of an ass.” Bunyan never makes any studied observations about the significance of this sacred arsenal, but the mere fact that he chose to enumerate so many of these Biblical weapons may say something about his ideas of “muscular Christianity.”