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The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come by John Bunyan (published 1678) is an allegorical novel. Bunyan wrote this book while imprisoned in 1675 for violations of the Conventicle Act which punished people for conducting unauthorised religious services outside of the Church of England. An expanded edition, with additions written after Bunyan was freed, appeared in 1679.
The allegory tells of Christian, an Everyman character who must make his way from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City of Zion. During his travel, he must make his way past hazards such as the Slough of Despond, temptations like Vanity Fair, and foes like the Giant Despair. Due to the long popularity of this devotional book, many of these phrases have become proverbial in English. In a second book, his wife and children, which once denounced his ideas, follow his path to the Celestial City.
The allegory of this book has antecedents in a large number of Christian devotional works that speak of the soul's path to Heaven, from the Lyke-Wake Dirge forwards. Bunyan's allegory stands out above his predecessors because of his simple and effective, if somewhat naïve, prose style, steeped in Biblical texts and cadences. He confesses his own naïveté in the verse prologue to the book:
- . . . I did not think
To shew to all the World my Pen and Ink
In such a mode; I only thought to make
I knew not what: nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my Neighbour; no not I;
I did it mine own self to gratifie.
Its explicitly ProtestantProtestantism in the strict sense of the word is the group of princes and imperial cities who, at the diet of Speyer in 1529, tried a protestation against the Edict of Worms which forbade the Lutheran teachings within the Holy Roman Empire. From there, th theology also made it much more popular than its predecessors. Finally, Bunyan's gifts and plain style breathe life into the abstractions of the anthropomorphizedAnthropomorphism also referred to as personification or prosopopeia is the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, forces of nature, and others. Anthropomorphism" comes from two Greek words, , anthropos meaning human, and , mor temptations and abstractions Christian encounters and converses with on his course to Heaven. Samuel JohnsonDr Samuel Johnson ( September 18, 1709 December 13, 1784), often referred to simply as Dr Johnson was one of England's greatest literary figures: a critic, poet, essayist, biographer and lexicographer whose bon mots are still frequently quoted in print to said that "this is the great merit of the book, that the most cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing." Three years after its publication, it was reprinted in colonial AmericaFor colonies not part of the 13 colonies see European colonization of the Americas or British colonization of the Americas. Starting in the late 16th century, the British began to colonize North America. The first attempts, notably the Colony of Roanoke,, and was widely read in the PuritanThe Puritans were members of a group of radical Protestants which developed in England after the Reformation. Terminology The word puritan is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth c colonies.
The book was the basis of an operaCharles Garnier's Opera, Paris, opened 1875 Opera is an art form consisting of a dramatic stage performance set to music. The drama is presented using the typical elements of theater such as scenery, costumes, and acting. However, the words of the opera, by Ralph Vaughan WilliamsRalph Vaughan Williams ( October 12, 1872 August 26, 1958) was an influential British composer. He was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge and served as a lieutenant in World War I. He wrote nine symphonies between 1910 and 1958 as well as numerous ot, premiered in 1951; see The Pilgrim's Progress (opera) .
