ABSTRACT

Within the last half-century, early scholarly approaches and analysis of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress have seen siginificant advances in mandating and enabling a more contextualized view of Bunyan’s oeuvre. Utilizing this fresh examination of context, John Bunyan’s Imaginary Writings in Context explores Bunyan’s writings in a double context: his fictional works vis-à-vis his own non-fictional writings, and his fictional writings in the context of written materials by other authors – books, tracts, spiritual biographies, and poems available to Bunyan. This volume presents these recent developments by blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, between literature and history, and in the case of Bunyan, between imaginative literatures in fiction and theological writing. Moreover, this book aims to delineate the imaginary world underlying Bunyan’s fictional writings by viewing Bunyan’s own fictional works in tandem with his non-fiction writings. Simultaneously it situates aspects of Bunyan’s fiction in the context of writings available to him, whether these be Holy Scripture, religious tracts by other authors, or ballads and short texts current in the wider culture of the time.

chapter 1|11 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|23 pages

The Bible as Literature

chapter 2|23 pages

John Bunyan, Soldier

chapter 4|19 pages

One Character 1

chapter 5|19 pages

Two Preachers

Donne and Bunyan

chapter 6|26 pages

John Bunyan and Jewry

chapter 7|36 pages

Facing Mortality

Sickness and Deathbed Repentance

chapter 8|28 pages

Martyrology and Humor?

chapter |16 pages

Epilogue

John Bunyan, Pilgrim