Bunyan’s ‘certain place fleeing Esau in the 1670s

• Published in: Religion, Culture and National Community in The 1670s p. 66
• Main Author: BETH LYNCH
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States University of Wales Press 2011; Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales Press
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Allegory; Applied sciences; Arts; Axiology; Bible; Blessings; British & Irish history; Christianity; Communications; Divine attributes; Divinity; Doctrinal theology; Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700; Engineering; Ethics; Frontispieces; History of religion; History of the Americas; Language; Language acts; Linguistics; Literary devices; Literary media; Literature; Locutionary acts; Main lines; Mercy; Morality; Narratives; Normative ethics; Philosophy; Practical theology; Rail lines; Railroad tracks; Railway systems; Religion; Religion: general; Ritual speech; Sacred texts; Social sciences; Speech acts; Spiritual belief systems; Systematic theology; Theology; Transportation; Virtue
• ISBN: 9780708324011; 0708324010

For a Reformed preacher and author such as John Bunyan (1628–1688), the biblical story of Jacob and Esau provided a stock paradigm of election and reprobation.¹ In his spiritual autobiography GraceAbounding(1666),² Bunyan recounts his obsessive temptation to identify himself with the reprobate Esau of Hebrews 12. In 1678–9, after a decade or so of composition, vacillation, deferred publication, and augmentation, the frontispiece and opening sentence of his conversion allegory,The Pilgrim’s Progress,³ unambiguously identified the authornarrator with the Old Testament incarnation of Esau’s younger brother, Jacob — the father of Israel and, for the early modern Reformed