Bunyan, John

Bunyan, John (1628-1688), English writer and Puritan minister, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the most renowned religious allegories in the English language.

Bunyan was born in November 1628 at Elstow, near Bedford, the son of a tinker. He served an apprenticeship at his father’s trade, and for three years from the age of 16, during the English Civil War, fought in the Parliamentary army. In about 1648 he married a member of one of the Puritan sects of the day; Bunyan experienced a religious conversion and joined the same Church as his wife. He was much influenced by his reading of the Commentary on Galatians by Martin Luther, in which he felt his own spiritual condition was discussed.

In 1655 Bunyan became one of the leaders of a Puritan church in Bedford, an “independent” congregation incorporated into the loose Cromwellian state Church, giving sermons as a lay preacher that drew on his experience of spiritual conflict. After his wife died, Bunyan remarried and became a popular preacher, speaking to large audiences and at the same time coming into conflict with the regular clergy who resented the freedom of unlearned and unordained men to preach. His most important theological statement from this time was embodied in The Doctrine of the Law and Grace Unfolded (1659). After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Puritans lost the privilege of freedom of worship, and it was declared illegal to conduct divine service except in accordance with the forms of the Church of England. Bunyan, who persisted in his unlicensed preaching, was confined to Bedford county jail from 1660 to 1672, although during a part of this time he was allowed a degree of freedom and was able to support his family by making shoelaces.

While Bunyan was in prison his library consisted of the Bible and the Book of Martyrs by the theologian John Foxe. Studying the content and literary style of these works, Bunyan began to write religious tracts and pamphlets. Before his release he wrote the first of his major works, the spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). In his Preface to this work, he described it as “a relation of the work of God upon my own soul”, and it is noteworthy for the ways in which he presents this “relation”. In its singular concentration on the sometimes contradictory workings of the psyche, it both typifies the Protestant devotional writing of the time, and helps to establish the literary preoccupation with the life of the individual mind that was to mark the development of the novel.

In 1675 Bunyan was imprisoned for six months as he refused to stop preaching, and during that time he probably wrote a large part of his major work, The Pilgrim’s Progress: From this World to that Which is to Come, a prose account of the pilgrimage of a soul in search of salvation (1st part published 1678; 2nd part, 1684). Here the interior dramas on which Grace Abounding focused are given vivid allegorical form: the soul, named Christian and awoken by the words of Evangelist, sets out from the doomed City of Destruction for the wonders of the Celestial City. Along the way he has to negotiate the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, and Doubting Castle, among other testing locations, and meets with personified virtues and vices including Mr Worldly Wise, the Giant Despair, Hopeful, and Faithful. In the poem that introduced the work to its first readers, Bunyan defended his resort to figurative language against the anticipated criticisms of such poetic writing:

During his last years Bunyan was universally recognized as a leading Puritan clergyman and author. He continued to publish theological treatises, sermons, and verse while devoting a large amount of time to the pastoral care of his congregation. He died of pneumonia on August 31, 1688, in London. His other writings include The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), a description of the life of a reprobate and a condemnation of the vices of Restoration society, and The Holy War (1682), a religious and political allegory.