The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
1678
Subtitled ‘From This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream’.
January 11, 2017
This is the third time I have recently tried to read ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ – each time previously I gave up simply due to lack of interest. Bunyan’s style is said to be straightforward, but I found the insistent preaching and sermonising soporific. This completed reading was finally achieved only through gritted teeth and from a stubborn determination not to be beaten a third time. Yet here’s the thing – ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ has been in print for almost 350 years, has a strong claim to be the first novel written in English (it has characters, tells a story, and is in prose) and had a profound influence on many novelists. All stories of personal development or growth own a debt to Bunyan, and many including ‘Little Women’, ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Vanity Fair’ acknowledge their debt explicitly. Wikipedia claims that the novel “is regarded as one of the most significant works of religious English literature” and goes on to claim that it has been translated into more than 200 languages. So my challenge was to find the value in this novel despite the teeth gritting.