The Word and the World: Spatial Allegory and the Nature of The Pilgrim's Progress

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 26; pp. 79 - 100
• Main Author: Bergen, Richard Angelo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2022
• Subjects: Bible; Christianity; Cities; Conceptual metaphor; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Metaphor; Pilgrims; Protestant Reformation; Realism; Religious literature; Spirituality; Topography; Lebanon; Israel; Jerusalem Israel
• ISSN: 0954-0970

Here Bunyan approximates medieval thought on the Book of Nature conceptual metaphor; specifically, that elements of nature may be considered in a deeper way from the primary physical function: 'Since it is the wisdom of God to speak to us ofttimes by trees, gold, silver, stones, beasts, fowls, fishes, spiders, ants, frogs, flies, lice, dust, & c., and here by wood; how should we by them understand his voice, if we count there is no meaning in them?'18 He does not list place as one of the categories of revelation here, but the entirety of this volume is framed with place as the primary locus of understanding divine intent. In the 'preface to the Christian reader', Bunyan offers an extensive discussion of place that once again uses the panoply of terms about the theologicalfigurative language: 'Yea, not only the Levitical Law and Temple, but as it seems to me, the whole Land of Canaan, the Place of their Lot to dwell in, was to them as Ceremonial, or a Figure. The Temple, Cities, churches, the Land of Canaan, the River Jordan, Sharon, Valleys, Lebanon, Sion, Jerusalem: these categories and particular sites are all treated as worthy of hermeneutical attention, and edifying to the soul. Based on this later work, when one looks back on The Pilgrim's Progress, some of the biblical 'Types, Shadows and Metaphors' that inspire Bunyan's narrative method clearly pertain to place; the topography of the entire land of Canaan, as well as the Jordan River, which Bunyan explicitly connects to a figurative instantiation of the river of death from Pilgrim 's Progress.