Reforming Bartholomew Fair : Bunyan, Jonson, and the Puritan Point of View

• Published in: The Huntington Library quarterly Vol. 74; no. 2; pp. 289 - 308
• Main Author: Milne, Kirsty
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 01.06.2011
• Subjects: Behavior Problems; British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Bunyan, John (1628-88); Christianity; Clergy; Dissent; Drama; English literature; Essays; Exhibits; Jonson, Ben (1573-1637); Literary Genres; Memory; Observation; Point of view; Puritanism; Satire; Stereotypes; Theaters
• ISSN: 0018-7895; 1544-399X
• DOI: 10.1525/hlq.2011.74.2.289

The striking parallels between Jonson's Bartholomew Fair and the Vanity Fair episode in The Pilgrim's Progress have been described as "a minor scholarly puzzle." Kirsty Milne proposes that, on the contrary, the relationship between the two texts opens up important questions about how a trope travels through time and how authorial "influence" is mediated through other minds and texts. Bunyan did not engage with Bartholomew Fair directly but with a trope-the disruptive Puritan at large in the fair-that was repeated and refracted in contemporary print culture. The Pilgrim's Progress recycles this trope but also attacks it, re-casting a satirical commonplace from the Puritan point of view. By reading Bunyan against Jonson, it becomes possible to extend Patrick Collinson's argument about the theater's "construction" of Puritanism, showing how stage stereotypes survived into the Restoration and helped to define the emerging category of "Dissent." [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]