'Rather Dark to Readers in General': Some Critical Casualties of John Bunyan's Holy War (1682)1

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 9; p. 25
• Main Author: Lynch, Beth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.1999
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature; Keats, John (1795-1821)
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Whilst reviewing the scholarship on this great, complex narrative, I became intrigued by a pattern which recurred with remarkable consistency, and seemingly regardless of historical period or theoretical orientation. Since Bunyan's identification in the late-nineteenth century as an object of academic attention, The Holy War has been dogged by unusually categorical judgements, and by pointed critical silences which are at odds with the attention devoted to his other major works. [...]it might be argued that much of the critical resistance to, and dismissal of The Holy War lies precisely in the enlightened reader's refusal to accept Bunyan's Reformed soteriology as the very substance of his narrative art. Only rarely does there appear to be an unbridgeable emotional gap between the idea and the similitude, and then it is when Bunyan has been betrayed by his absolute trust in the language of the Bible. [...]because the Epistle to the Galatians speaks of crucifying the affections and lusts, the condemned Diabolonians are put to death by literal crucifixion. [...]these editors dismiss the suggestive linguistic developments, which so subtly transform the work's allegorical scope, as a betrayal of the artist by his faithful and 'absolute trust in the language of the Bible'.