Walking the Streets with Bunyan from Grace Abounding to The Holy War

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 23; pp. 7 - 23
• Main Author: Gay, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Allegory; Ambiguity; Autobiographies; Blake, William (1757-1827); British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature; Epic literature; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Metaphor; Modern literature; Morality; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Narrative techniques; Narratives; Puritanism; Readers; Reading; Religion; Religious wars; Roads & highways; Space; Spirituality; Urban areas; Walking
• ISSN: 0954-0970

[...]space has agency conferred by human activity: its nature is dynamic and not static to the point that physical space 'has no reality without the energy that is deployed within it'. Space means movement: it 'exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. [...]space is composed of intersections of mobile elements.' [...]we are mindful that Mansoul is figuratively a single person subsuming the extended metaphor of urban space into his (or her) consciousness. [...]the eye at Eyegate in the frontispiece seems to stare towards us, raising our awareness of our roles as readers by constructing a reciprocity of reader and urban text as mediated by the author positioned between us and the town. The first fixed point is an Anglican church: 'because I knew no better, I fell in very eagerly with the Religion of the times, to wit, to go to Church twice a day, and that too with the foremost, and there should very devoutly both say and sing as others did; yet retaining my wicked life'.10 The church in this passage is a site for the production of conformity in three aspects.