'John Bunyan: Texts, Contexts, Reception' - The International John Bunyan Society Fourth Triennial Conference, The Open University and De Montfort University, Bedford, 1-5 September 2004

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 12; p. 118
• Main Author: Davies, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2006
• Subjects: Beckett, Samuel (1906-1989); Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Bunyan, John (1628-88); Conferences; Cowper, William (1731-1800)
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Day focused on the ongoing story of 'Bunyan and Englishness', confronting Bunyan's disappearance from an already 'dismantled' Leavisite literary tradition, on the one hand, and his awkward place within other traditions of 'Englishness' (spiritual, political, cultural), on the other. In 'Bunyan Now', Tom Paulin returned to the physicality of Bunyan's prose and its impressively 'tactile quality' in order to champion Bunyan as a writer sensitive to the power of the English language, and also as an astute political figure, ever attuned to and yet never fearful of challenging oppression and injustice. Among the many other contributions, any of which would serve to indicate this conference's tremendous range and variety of interests, included Julie Campbell's (University of Southampton) reading of Samuel Beckett's Molloy as a twentieth-century reworking of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Chris Garrett's (Texas A&M University) refreshing series of enquiries into T.S.'s spurious Second Part of The Pilgrim's Progress, alongside some thoroughly absorbing reassessments of The Holy War, in the Restoration contexts of Nonconformist prayer and dissent, proposed respectively by David Gay (University of Alberta) and Katsuhiro Engestsu (Doshisha University).