The Pilgrim's Progress

[poliphilo]

I like Bunyan. He's solid.  His people- for all that they wear placards- have a roundaboutness to them. A lot of it's in the dialogue; they may come on as personified vices and virtues, but they talk like human beings. Poor little By-ends with his resentment of the nickname he's been given and his insistence that it's not his fault if his sincerely held convictions always somehow happen to coincide with the orthodoxy of the day- why- he's almost Dickensian.

And for all that Bunyan's theology is sometimes unpleasantly vindictive there's never any doubting his essential godliness. The Pilgrim's Progress may be the first English novel but it's also the last trumpet blast of medieval Christianity.