BUNYAN, JOHN. — English writer and preacher, born on 28 Nov. 1628 at Elstow near Bedford, died in London on 31 Aug. 1688. He served for two years in Cromwell’s army, absorbing those Puritan-Calvinist doctrines which he never abandoned even after his adherence to the Baptists. After his marriage he abandoned his dissolute life and was ordained as a minister of the Baptist sect. Morality and religion then became the two forces upon which he founded his principles of life and thought, principles which he continued to preach even after the Restoration (1660), for which he was arrested and imprisoned for more than twelve years. A modest commoner (he was a tinker), he derived his only literary education from the Bible and a few other religious books.
His major work, *The Pilgrim’s Progress* (1678), a prose allegory destined to become the most widely circulated devotional guide in the English-speaking world, allegorically depicts the struggles of the soul in search of salvation. Christian, the pilgrim protagonist, on his journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, overcomes a series of obstacles before he can behold from the heights of the Delectable Mountains the towers of the longed-for Zion. The narrative unfolds in a style of almost childlike simplicity, with monotonous insistence on details, illuminated at times by touches of vivid representation derived from biblical models. The comparison with Dante’s *Divine Comedy* cannot extend beyond the shared spiritual itinerary of both works and their representative value regarding the collective conscience of an entire age. The work betrays the Puritan-Calvinist hatred and contempt for the Catholic Church. More directly autobiographical is *Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners* (1666), in which Bunyan reveals his obsession with the fear of eternal damnation. Of interest for its realistic character is *The Life and Death of Mr. Badman* (1680). Yet almost all of Bunyan’s works, being devoid of literary pretensions, succeed in communicating to the Anglo-Saxon reader the intimate experiences of this singular writer, so distant instead from the demands of Mediterranean spirituality.