Pilgrims Progress, Puritan Progress By Kathleen M.

Swaim - Puritans looked with distress on the condition of their church covenanted together in groups of self-professed godly souls to reform what they considered an intolerable string of abuses constant pious endeavor earned their neighbours hate for troublesome rigorous and hypocritical selfrighteous zeal - Pilgrims Progress has been called: The epic of the poor The prose epic of English Puritanism - John Bunyan has been called: The Shakespeare of the Puritans The Spenser of the people - Part One Mythic and narrative force that has drawn consistent admiration Looks backward to Reformation theology and medieval certainties Scriptural and spiritual evidence predominates in the masculine Part One - Progress in the seventeenth century: American colonization Defeat of the plague Descartes legitimating of methodical doubt Literary priority begins to shift from the theatre to the novel From an aristocratic to a mostly middle-class audience From hearing to reading - Pilgrims Progress transposes into allegory Bunyans own life and era But the life and era encapsulate the Puritan culture they inhabit - Bunyan equated with Christian as the representative Puritan of the English Puritan period