ReformingBartholomew Fair: Bunyan, Jonson, and the Puritan Point of View

The striking parallels between Jonson'sBartholomew Fairand the Vanity Fair episode inThe Pilgrim's Progresshave 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 t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Huntington Library quarterly Vol. 74; no. 2; pp. 289 - 308
Main Author Milne, Kirsty
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published University of California Press 01.06.2011
Subjects
Christianity
Civil wars
Literary tropes
Polemics
Puppets
Recycling
Satire
Stereotypes
Theater
Vanity
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Summary:The striking parallels between Jonson'sBartholomew Fairand the Vanity Fair episode inThe Pilgrim's Progresshave 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 withBartholomew Fairdirectly but with a trope—the disruptive Puritan at large in the fair—that was repeated and refracted in contemporary print culture.The Pilgrim's Progressrecycles 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.”
ISSN:0018-7895
1544-399X
DOI:10.1525/hlq.2011.74.2.289