The Pilgrim's Progress
Bunyan's allegory uses the everyday world of common experience as a metaphor for the spiritual journey of the soul toward God. The hero, Christian, encounters many obstacles in his quest: the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Doubting Castle, the Wicket Gate, as well as those who tempt him from his path (e.g., Talkative, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, the Giant Despair). But in the end he reaches Beulah Land, where he awaits the crossing of the river of death and his entry into the heavenly city. "Pilgrim's Progress" was enormously influential not only as a best-selling inspirational tract in the late 17th century, but as an ancestor of the 18th-century English novel, and many of its themes and ideas have entered permanently into Western culture.
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- Robertson Davies' [0] lecture, "Reading" (1990), has a nice a answer to the intro of this post:
> Our grandparents used to say that we must eat a peck of dirt before we die, and they were right. And you must read a lot of rubbish before you die, as well, because an exclusive diet of masterpieces will give you spiritual dyspepsia. How can you know that a mountain peak is glorious if you have never scrambled through a dirty valley? How do you know that your gourmet meal is perfect of its kind if you have never eaten a roadside hot dog? If you want to know what a masterpiece The Pilgrim's Progress is, read Bonfire of the Vanities, and if you have any taste -- which of course may not be the case -- you will quickly find out. So I advise you, as well as reading great books that I have been talking about, read some current books and periodicals. They will help you to take the measure of the age in which you live.
(I encourage reading the whole lecture [1]! It's a fun read and there are a lot of great bits in there that I could have quoted here. But I contented myself with just the one excerpt.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Davies
[1] https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-to-z/...
- The Pilgrim's progress. John Bunyan
- 1) The Pilgrim's Progress, and 2) The Holy War - John Bunyan
- The Bible, definitely. Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan.
Those are the two most published books in history and have changed more people's thinking than any two other books.
- Yeah, I was surprised to not see any religious books. That's a good one I hadn't thought of. I was thinking of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, one of the most popular books ever written by American and probably the most owned book in the country for an era.
- This has been a source I’ve referred to on and off for years. It’s really interesting to read some things that don’t show up in our everyday Bible. Including things that were considered not canon by the early church. I enjoyed reading the translation of the Shepherds of Hermas. It was not the easiest to follow, but in a sense it was a very popular allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress was centuries later!
