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A review by daja57
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
4.0
This classic allegory is one of the best-selling books ever. It was written in 1678 by John Bunyan, a tinker who had been a soldier with the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War, while he was in Bedford prison for being an unlicensed preacher during the religious repressions following the restoration of the English monarchy.
It is presented as a series of dreams. The characters are, as was the fashion of the time, named for the characteristics: thus Christian, Mr Valiant-for-Truth, Mr Standfast, Mercy and so on. In the first part Christian travels through hardships such as the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death and encounters temptations such as Vanity Fair and monsters such as Apollyon before fording the River of Death. In the second part, Christian's wife Christiana and his four sons form the nucleus of a party making a second pilgrimage in his by-now-famous footsteps.
The prose is inevitably old-fashioned. There are no chapters but there are marginal annotations which describe which part of the story you are in. Poems, presumably hymns, are interspersed through the narrative.
Some of it is rather tedious theologising - it is, after all, a sermon - but the picaresque story, despite the inevitability of the happy ending, still has its charm.
It is presented as a series of dreams. The characters are, as was the fashion of the time, named for the characteristics: thus Christian, Mr Valiant-for-Truth, Mr Standfast, Mercy and so on. In the first part Christian travels through hardships such as the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death and encounters temptations such as Vanity Fair and monsters such as Apollyon before fording the River of Death. In the second part, Christian's wife Christiana and his four sons form the nucleus of a party making a second pilgrimage in his by-now-famous footsteps.
The prose is inevitably old-fashioned. There are no chapters but there are marginal annotations which describe which part of the story you are in. Poems, presumably hymns, are interspersed through the narrative.
Some of it is rather tedious theologising - it is, after all, a sermon - but the picaresque story, despite the inevitability of the happy ending, still has its charm.