Pilgrim's Progress, Puritan Progress: Discourses and Contexts.

It is a commonplace that the seventeenth century was a critical period of transition from the theological world of the later middle ages and the Reformation to the more secular and culturally segmented world of modernity. It is the theme of this book that the two parts of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, although written only a few years apart, can nonetheless be read as pointing in opposite directions, the first part looking back to that earlier theological world, the second part pointing forward to the more secular modern world - the first echoing the epic, the second adumbrating the novel. Swaim develops this theme in a series of chapters by examining allegory, heroic myth of travel and adventure, the scriptural and sermonic words, and Puritan spiritual autobiography as the necessary backgrounds for understanding part one of Bunyan's classic. In contrast, the author argues, part two of Bunyan's story centers on the figure of the heroine, whose "context is comedic, social, and communal" (161). The interpretive framework for this part is developed in chapters on Christiana as heroine, on the church as the communal and social dimension of pilgrimage, and on Puritan meditation on the "creatures." In analyzing these various subjects the text of Bunyan is illuminated by data and theoretical models drawn from Puritan theology, literary and feminist theory, anthropology, comparative mythology, and much else. There is a great deal of reference back and forth between Bunyan's sermons and theological writings on the one hand and the two parts of his allegory on the other.

This book has many strengths. One is that Bunyan's allegory is understood in close relation to Puritan theology in general and to Bunyan's extensive theological writings in particular, the latter toward which the author exhibits an impressive familiarity. Another is the helpful discussion of a number of biblical pasages crucial for understanding Pilgrim's Progress, which, added to the discussions of Puritan theology and Bunyan's many theological writings, makes the book a most informative commentary on extensive portions and central themes of Bunyan's allegory. Swaim's successive chapters also constitute a very good introduction to the requisite interpretive contexts for the Pilgrim's Progress. Yet a further strength of her book is that she has effectively highlighted and analyzed the distinctive characteristics of the second part of the allegory, clarifying the differences between the two parts.

Her depiction, however, of the different directions in which the two parts point, while suggestive, is perhaps exaggerated. The Bunyan of the first part is not altogether a Reformation theologian, insofar as that theology (and especially its attendant spirituality) has been modified by individualistic and sectarian preoccupations typical both of Bunyan and of certain strands of later Puritanism. And the Bunyan of the second part is also far from drifting toward Latitudinarianism (288) and secularization, ensconced as he was within the confines of Restoration conventicle life, with all its resentment of a wider persecuting world. Swaim tends to minimize the still-profoundly theological character of the second part as an analysis of sanctification. Also, Bunyan's own personal development and psychology must not be left out in accounting for the differences between the two parts: an older and mellower Bunyan, who had no doubt heard comments on the first part of his allegory from co-religionists, was responding to his fuller experience of congregational life.

In spite of a generally thorough knowledge of theological points, Swaim occasionally misunderstands Calvinist theology and Puritan practice: Calvin for example did not insist on scrupulous examination of conscience for signs of salvation (132), though later Puritans did, nor were "all converts . . . required to write their own spiritual histories" "at least once in their lives" (137). Futhermore, the tract Reprobation Asserted (252), formerly accounted among Bunyan's writings, was almost certainly not by him. Notwithstanding these minor caveats, this is a worthwhile addition to the literature on Bunyan.

DEWEY D. WALLACE, JR. George Washington University