John
Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrim's
Progress, lived in Bedford England during the 17th century. He
was a poor man who Preached did tinkering for a living. He was a Puritan and a Reformed Baptist who
Preached at the Bedford Meeting House , however this was illegal because he was
not recognized as a preacher by the state because he had no license to do so.
This did not bother him and refused to
follow the required Book of Common
Prayer when he was teaching the word of
God, and because of this he was arrested and put in jail in 1660. This is where
he first started to write this work, which is considered to be what lead the
creation of the novel, even though it had been stated that “Bunyan is widely
depicted as having no predecessors and no successors; he just sprang form the
soil of Bedfordshire as unexpectedly as the volcano which erupted in a Mexican
cornfield. His masterpiece, The Pilgrim's
Progress, became and immediate success and for more than 200 years remained
the most widely read book other than the bible”( Reeves, 64). He ended up being in jail for over 12 years
and didn’t release the work until 1678, and followed if with a second part in
1684.
The
Pilgrim's Progress, is an allegory that tells the story of a man named
Christian who feels as though he is going to hell and so he goes on a journey
to find the Celestial City, or heaven. The story was his journey to salvation in part
one and part two is basically the journey his wife and children to join him in
the holy city, but he had made it slightly easier for them because he had
already been through.
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