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This volume is a comprehensive collection of articles on Bunyan as well as including several broader views of the Nonconformist tradition.
This is a major reinterpretation of John Bunyan, each of whose works, including the posthumous, is analyzed in its immediate historical context. The author draws on recent literature on depression to demonstrate that Bunyan suffered from this mood disorder as a young man and then used this experience to help mold his literary works.
The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan is the most extensive volume of original essays ever published on the seventeenth-century nonconformist preacher and writer, John Bunyan. Its thirty-eight chapters examine Bunyan's life and works, their religious and historical contexts, and the critical reception of his writings, in particular his allegorical narrative, The Pilgrim's Progress. Interdisciplinary and comprehensive, it provides unparalleled scope and expertise, ranging from literary theory to religious history and from theology to post-colonial criticism. The Handbook is structured in four sections. The first, 'Contexts', deals with the historical Bunyan in relation to various aspects of his life, background, and work as a nonconformist: from basic facts of biography to the nature of his church at Bedford, his theology, and the religious and political cultures of seventeenth-century Dissent. Part 2 considers Bunyan's literary output: from his earliest printed tracts to his posthumously published works. Offering discrete chapters on Bunyan's major works - Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), The Pilgrim's Progress, Parts I and II (1678; 1684); The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), and The Holy War (1682) - this section nevertheless covers Bunyan's oeuvre in its entirety: controversial and pastoral, narrative and poetic. Section 3, 'Directions in Criticism', engages with Bunyan in literary critical terms, focusing on his employment of form and language and on theoretical approaches to his writings: from psychoanalytic to post-secular criticism. Section 4, 'Journeys', tackles some of the ways in which Bunyan's works, and especially The Pilgrim's Progress, have travelled throughout the world since the late seventeenth century, assessing Bunyan's place within key literary periods and their distinctive developments: from the eighteenth-century novel to the writing of 'empire'.
Bunyan's works re-evaluated, and considered in their Restoration and non-conformist context. This book undertakes a major reassessment of the works of John Bunyan [1628-88], the nonconformist author of The Pilgrim's Progress, who was imprisoned for preaching his beliefs. Through a reading of each of his narratives, and many of his pastoral writings, both in textual detail and in relation to the various traditions - such as Reformed spirituality and the nonconformist trial - within which he lived, preached, and wrote, the author offers a systematic re-evaluation of Bunyan's development as an author. She presents new perspectives on his most popular works, Grace Abounding and The Pilgrim's Progress, whilst arguing that the significance of the lesser-known Life and Death of Mr Badman and The Holy War has been severely underestimated; and she shows how overall the works offer a candid document of nonconformist experience in the Restoration period.
This collection of fifteen essays looks at the theme of decadence and its recurring manifestations in European literature and literary criticism from medieval times to the present day. Various definitions of the term are explored, including the notion of decadence as physical decay. Some of the essays draw parallels between modernist and postmodernist notions of decadence. Similarities are detected between fin de siècle decadence at the end of the nineteenth century (which reaches its apotheosis in the character of Eugene Wrayburn in Our Mutual Friend) and depictions of decadence in our own age as we enter the new millennium.
John Bunyan (1628-88) lived and wrote through some of the most turbulent years of political, social, and religious change in British history from civil war, through Commonwealth and Protectorate to the Restoration. Imprisoned for unlicensed preaching as a Nonconformist, Bunyan turned to writing to sustain his pastoral mission and composed some of the best-known, and most critically acclaimed, seventeenth-century texts, from his intensely moving spiritual autobiography, Grace bounding to the Chief of Sinners, to the world famous allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan's style fused vivid depiction of the everyday world of ordinary men and women with powerful narratives to dramatise his religious convictions. This accessible study of his life, times, and writing introduces all his key works within the contexts of their original moment and later international impact and argues that Bunyan is a writer whose work continues to reward readers of all ages, beliefs, and nationalities.
Features:• Wide chronological coverage of English literature, especially texts found in the Norton, Oxford, Blackwell and other standard anthologies• Short, punchy essays that engage with the texts, the critics, and literary and social issues• Background and survey articles• Glossaries of Bible themes, images and narratives• Annotated bibliography and questions for class discussion or personal reflection• Scholarly yet accessible, jargon-free approach – ideal for school and university students, book groups and general readersCreated for readers who may be unfamiliar with the Bible, church history or theological development, it offers an understanding of Christianity’s key concepts, themes, images and characters as they relate to English literature up to the present day.
Awarded the 2007 National Research Prize SAES/AEFA. This study is a reappraisal of John Bunyan in the light of the dissenting religious culture of the late-seventeenth century. Charges of schism and fanaticism were repeatedly levelled against Bunyan, both from within the dissenting community and without, but far from being chastened by these accusations, Bunyan responded with a religious discourse marked by a rhetoric of excess. The focus of this book is therefore upon Bunyan's overwhelming spiritual experiences, especially the representation of torment, in his literary and polemical works. The believers' suffering was an obsessive concern of dissenting ministers, even to the point where their writings are often remembered today for little else. Hitherto, most scholars have termed all the mental states that they invoke 'despair', but this simplifies the experiences at issue. A wealth of contemporary material helps to restore the nuances of seventeenth-century physical and spiritual conditions, from enthusiasm to melancholy and madness; from fear to desertion and sloth. These chapters explore fresh ways in which this subtle typology of torment and its extreme manifestations form the core of the literary expression of Restoration dissent, challenging Bunyan to represent spiritual equilibrium as the ultimate quest of the earthly pilgrimage.
Writing from the model and authority of scripture, Bunyan offers his readers fictional narratives and theological treatises that variously challenge, resist, invert, and imaginatively transform, the conditions under which they are written."--BOOK JACKET.
This collection of fifteen essays by leading scholars examines the extraordinary diversity and richness of the writing produced in response to, and as part of, the upheaval in the religious, political and cultural life of the nation which constituted the English Revolution. The turmoil of the civil wars fought out from 1639 to 1651, the shock of the execution of Charles I, and the uncertainty of the succeeding period of constitutional experiment were enacted and refigured in writing which both shaped and was shaped by the tumultuous times. The various strategies of this battle of the books are explored through essays on the course of events, intellectual trends and the publishing industry; in discussions of canonical figures such as Milton, Marvell, Bunyan and Clarendon; and in accounts of women's writing and of fictional and non-fictional prose. A full chronology, detailed guides to further reading and a glossary are included.