fiction

"The Pilgrim's Progress" is widely known and widely imitated. Perhaps a bit too widely. While the book itself is stunning, having seen, heard, or read so many attempts to imitate it, I found that the original effect of the story was lessened for me.

By all means, this book should be read -- it is in itself a great work of literature, and it is a prime example of Puritan thought. Be aware, however, that much of it will seem trite and worn -- not because of anything inherently wrong with Bunyan's writing -- primarily because we have all heard so many poor imitations that it will be difficult to put them aside.

However, this book still warrants a reading for the simple fact that it is a great story! I shall be re-reading this in the not-too-distant future, hopefully better prepared to dismiss the memories of the imitations and to appreciate the genius of Bunyan's allegory.

Read it!

I read The Pilgrim's Progress as a child and recently reread it in order to do a comparative essay on allegorical journeys for my english class. The other book I read for the assignment was Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, and I found that Bunyan's novel equaled or exceeded Conrad's in every way. While Conrad used far more symbolism and allusions, I felt that Bunyan still did a better job of making the reader identify with his character's journey. The Pilgrim's Progress is a wonderfully written story that inspires hope and confidence in God to help his people though their own journeys.

This is intended as a review of the Penguin Classics edition of "The Pilgrim's Progress," edited by Roger Sharrock, which, as of this writing, is still in the Penguin catalogue, and presumably will continue to be available. [July note: Penguin is again listing it as current.] Most of my comments are specific to this edition, and a few other closely related text editions.

Back in, I think, the early 1970s, I was taking a course in seventeenth century English literature, and encountered a library copy of Roger Sharrock's 1960 Oxford English Texts edition of "The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which is to Come," an immensely impressive editorial treatment of the famous allegory of the Christian life, but fairly expensive, and, I think, out of print. (There was a revised printing in 1975; it seems to be out of print for now.) Sharrock's edition was intended as a revision of a 1928 edition by J.B. Wharey, but it broke new ground in Bunyan studies. It returned for its base text for Part One to the first edition of 1678, drawing on the second (also 1678) and third (1679) editions only for Bunyan's additions to the text. (For Part Two, published in 1684, only its first printing has any claim to authority.)

This decision was based on the recognition that printing house practices had rather quickly denatured Bunyan's highly personal, colloquial, and even regional (Bedfordshire) English, turning it into what typesetters thought of as acceptably genteel, beginning as early as the second printing. The progress of textual corruption had continued through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, despite several attempts to provide scholarly editions. Close study of Bunyan's other, rather extensive, and generally less frequently printed, writings, helped to establish a clearer idea of his use of English, as against that of the printers. For the first time in centuries, Bunyan's most famous book was available in (almost) exactly his own words, as nearly as possible as he had set it on paper. Since Bunyan's vocabulary and style of punctuation reflected the speaking voice of an accomplished preacher (the "crime" for which he was imprisoned for twelve years), this almost amounted to restoring the correct meter to a poem long printed with incorrect versification.

Fortunately, or so it seemed, Roger Sharrock had also edited a very slightly modernized text, without the full critical apparatus and notes, for the Penguin English Library (1965). It was not readily available at the campus bookstore, and the student-oriented stores in the area were already being replaced by chains, but there was a religious --- excuse me, a *Christian* -- bookstore in the neighborhood, which had a good selection, and generally well-informed and helpful clerks. I was bemused to find an unfamiliar member of the staff, who was quite enthusiastic about the King James Bible, in what is in fact Elizabethan English, but dubious about an unmodernized version of "Pilgrim's Progress." The book's language is almost a century closer to us in time, and it claims only to be the work of a "Tinker and a Poor Man" (as the title of American editions of Christopher Hill's biography reminds us), not divine revelation. Still, she assured me, an original-spelling edition of it would be just "too hard to understand." Surely I would be better off with one of the many nice adaptations or retellings? See the children's' section. (I had a sudden image of a special angel assigned to each and every copy of the King James Version, to supply linguistic information to its readers, lest they go astray over the unfamiliar words and grammar, but decided not to confide this to the clerk, who was trying to be helpful.)

In the end, it turned out the Penguin English Library edition was unavailable; I eventually found a used copy, years too late for the course, but worth having. I don't find Bunyan an edifying guide to the religious life (see below), but he is in many ways an appealing human being, and a remarkable writer, the author of the last great medieval allegories in English, which are at the same time among the first modern novels.

In 1986, however, Penguin reissued Sharrock's popular edition in the Penguin Classics series, and even gave it a revised edition in 1987, as well as a splendid new cover (from William Blake's illustration of a scene in the book). In the meantime, the Oxford text as such formed the basis of a World's Classics edition, edited by H.N. Keeble, with a new introduction, helpful notes, and a chronology of Bunyan's life based on the latest research (1984). That edition went through a number of printings, and was reissued in slightly larger format when the World's Classics line was revamped as the Oxford World's Classics. Keeble's edition has just been replaced by a new version by W.R. Owens, likewise following Sharrock's critical edition, but restoring a few more (specified) first edition readings which, in Owens' view, make sense as they stand; I have reviewed this last separately.

It should be made clear that I have written this review as a reader with an interest in seventeenth century English literature and history, and a concern with the combination of realism of style and incident with a narrative of marvels and adventures. As far as what John Bunyan considered most important about his work, I am probably a less than ideal reader. Although coming from a secularized Jewish background instead of an Orthodox one, I tend to agree with David Daiches that the Pilgrim, Christian, seems to spend far too much time worrying "What must I do to be saved?" in the World to Come, and too little asking "What ought I to do?" in this world. Still, I find Bunyan's sincerity, and willingness to work out the implications of his theology, impressive in their own right.