|
|
Article: Trope and truth in The Pilgrim's Progress.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Rice University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
What is life? A frenzy. What is life? A vain hope, a shadow, a fiction.
--Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Considered in allegorical terms, then, the profane world is both
elevated and devalued.
--Walter Benjamin (1)
In "The Author's Apology for His Book" prefacing The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan confesses that he "[f]ell suddenly into an Allegory" while writing something else. (2) While this "fall" might be presumed a mere metaphor for an accident, I propose a reading of the work that takes this phrase quite literally, nor am I alone in doing so. Thomas H. Luxon bases his book Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation on a ...