Book Review: A Monument for Wayfarers: The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan. Edited by edited by Michael Davies and W. R. Owens. Oxford University Press, 2018

Part IV concludes the volume with case studies of the reception and appropriation of Bunyan in a variety of cultural contexts from the early novels of the Restoration period to a twenty-first century puppet show. While the first part of The Pilgrim 's Progress in particular unsurprisingly attra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBunyan studies no. 23; pp. 89 - 98
Main Author Parry, David
Format Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2019
Subjects
Adaptations
Aesthetics
Allegory
Allusion
Authenticity
Bunyan, John (1628-1688)
Childrens literature
Christianity
Culture
Exegesis & hermeneutics
Film adaptations
Gender
Handbooks
Heroism & heroes
History
Literary canon
Literary characters
Literary criticism
Literary devices
Literary influences
Literary translation
Literature
Narratives
Novels
Pointing
Politics
Readers
Reading
Religion
Spirituality
Theology
Writing
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Summary:Part IV concludes the volume with case studies of the reception and appropriation of Bunyan in a variety of cultural contexts from the early novels of the Restoration period to a twenty-first century puppet show. While the first part of The Pilgrim 's Progress in particular unsurprisingly attracts attention throughout the handbook, Michael Davies's specific chapter on this text foregrounds the meta-questions of Bunyan's allegorical method as training the reader to perceive with the eyes of faith, while Margaret Olof Thickstun revisits the debate over the gender politics of The Second Part, pointing out that Christian's heroic role is split between Christiana's motherly virtue and the more military heroism of the male minister Great-heart. Anne Dunan-Page's account of the Bedford Independent congregation of which Bunyan was a member and then pastor tellingly observes that the Bedford church refused to give letters of commendation to former members seeking to join closed communion Baptist churches in London. [...]Michael Mullett's opening biographical chapter states that 'the content of Bunyan's preaching was finding a place for a voluntarism that may seem at odds with the absolute decree of predestination' and that Bunyan's writing 'muted the principles of predestinarían Calvinism to which he subscribed in order to find a place for human initiative' (p. 31).
ISSN:0954-0970