Trauma and Transformation: The Political Progress of John Bunyan ed. by Vera J. Camden (review)

• Published in: Christianity & literature Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 136 - 139
• Main Author: Johnson, Galen K
• Format: Journal Article Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Malibu Johns Hopkins University Press 01.10.2009
• Subjects: Blogs; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Christianity; Comprehension; English literature; Essays; Hearing; Poetry; Politics; England; Ohio; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US
• ISSN: 0148-3331; 2056-5666

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: 136 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE in English history, cannot be divorced from his poetry. Paradise Lostis, at heart, a story about rebellion against authority, with the important distinction that God is not King Charles I. But Smith's book is not a coherent study of Milton's poetry. It is a haphazard compilation of passages and episodes, mainly from the major poems, that seem to catch his eye in connection with the political theme at hand. As the oftmentioned Stanley Fish noted in "Happy Birthday, Milton" on his New York Times blog (July 13, 2008), Smith's "published work is more historical than literary:' And so I return to that unfortunate and misleading title: Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? In the same blog posting, Fish concluded that "the title is a publisher's teaser and the answer to the question (as Smith knows) is,No, he'sdifferent:' To ask whether Milton is better than Shakespeare is akin to asking if Beethoven is better than Mozart or Leonardo da Vinci is better than Michelangelo. All are artistic geniuses, but each is different, uniquely and wonderfully different-not better. Smith's title may tease, but it does not satisfy. Claudia M. Champagne Our Lady of HolyCross College Trauma and Transformation: The Political ProgressofJohn Bunyan. Edited by Vera J. Camden. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-8047-5785-2. Pp. xiv + 185. $55.00. Traumaand Transformation: ThePolitical Progress ofJohn Bunyan is the second forayofStanford University Pressinto contemporaryscholarship on the seventeenthcentury tinker, following 2002's Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent by Richard L. Greaves, to whose memory this new collection of essays is dedicated. The articles selected for inclusion by Vera J. Camden themselves came together under traumatic circumstances, as all but one of them were originally delivered at an international conference on Bunyan in Cleveland, Ohio, in early October 2001, mere days after the Federal Aviation Administration once again allowed public air travel in the United States following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Camden, Professor ofEnglish at Kent State University and a protege of Greaves, has published multiply on Bunyan and his era, and was the host and International John Bunyan Society president for the Ohio conference. Two of the volume's nine essays come from Camden herself, and among its other contributors are her two later successors as IJBS president, Thomas H. Luxon of Dartmouth College and Roger Pooley of KeeleUniversity, England. Bycontrast, when I attended the conference from which these essays came, I was still in the dissertation stage of my doctoral program. Having recently received promotion to Associate Professor, I took satisfaction while reading this book in how much the expansion of my contextual knowledge BOOK REVIEWS 137 of Bunyan's century has enhanced my comprehension of these essays in the seven years between hearing them and reading them. And yet, while appreciating this addition to Bunyan literature not only for the renown of its contributors but also for the friendship I have developed with most of them, I also find myself revisiting and actually confirming some of the impressions I had as a scholarly neophyte, that several of the essays fall short of their fullest potential. Camden announces in her introductory essay that the unifying theme of the book is the consideration that the execution of King Charles I in 1649 had not only profound cultural ramifications in England's subsequent Cromwellian period but also a particularlystrong mental influence upon Bunyan. As alicensed psychologist, Camden is particularly interested in any indication of whether the public execution of even a despised national ruler left feelings of remorse or internal conflict within the hearts and minds of the English people. Thus she opines that the unrighteous behavior that Bunyan recalls from his young adulthood in Grace Abounding to the Chief ofSinners "may very well have been a panicked response to having deposed the patriarchy as represented by both King and father" (7). As interesting as such speculation may be, it is also the harbinger of an absorption with making Bunyan fit theory that appears often throughout the whole book. The next two essays after Camden's introduction, neither of which coincidentally even mentions Bunyan, illustrate this impression. Peter...