- The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Abbreviations
- Notes on Contributors
- Bunyan’s Life: Some Significant Dates
- Introduction: Bunyan’s Presence
- Bunyan’s Life, Bunyan’s Lives
- Bunyan’s England: The Trials and Triumphs of Restoration Dissent
- Bunyan and the Bedford Congregation
- Bunyan’s Theology and Religious Context
- Bunyan and the Word
- Bunyan’s Reading
- Bunyan and Gender
- ‘Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate’: Bunyan and the Writing of Dissent
- Bunyan’s Partners in Print
- Early Works: Bunyan in the 1650s
- Bunyan in Prison: Writings from the 1660s
- <i>Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners</i> (1666)
- ‘The Desired Countrey’: Bunyan’s Writings on the Church in the 1670s
- The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678): Chasing Apollyon’s Tale
- <i>The Life and Death of Mr. Badman</i> (1680)
- <i>The Holy War</i> (1682)
- Piety and Radicalism: Bunyan’s Writings of the 1680s
- <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II</i> (1684)
- ‘Truth in Meeter’: Bunyan’s Poetry and Dissenting Poetics
- Bunyan’s Posthumously Published Works
- Bunyan, Emblem, and Allegory
- Bunyan and Romance
- The Prose Style of John Bunyan
- The Language of <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress</i>
- ‘Nor do thou go to work without my Key’: Reading Bunyan Out to the Edges
- Bunyan and the Historians
- Bunyan Unbound: Prison and the Place of Creativity
- Bunyan, Poststructuralism, and Postmodernism
- Bunyan, Theory, and Theology: A Case for Post-Secular Criticism
- Bunyan and the Early Novel
- <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress</i> in the Evangelical Revival
- Bunyan and the Romantics
- Bunyan and the Victorians
- Bunyan and America
- Bunyan: Class and Englishness
- Wayfaring Images: The Pilgrim’s Pictorial Progress
- Bunyan for Children
- Bunyan and Empire
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter surveys examples of the use of poststructuralist and postmodernist theory to analyse Bunyan’s work. The primary concerns and general agenda of poststructuralist/postmodernist theory are identified to assess their applicability to Bunyan’s writings (particularly his fiction and spiritual autobiography), focusing on the concepts of difference, différance, discourse, grand and little narratives, and the differend, as outlined in the work of Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. It is argued that such theories emphasize instability, and that this was a prominent feature of life in later seventeenth-century England: a period of considerable socio-political turmoil in which various ideological narratives were vying for power. Bunyan is seen to be someone constantly struggling against difference, différance, and differends: a factor that renders his writings particularly receptive to poststructuralist/postmodernist readings.
Keywords: différance, difference, differend, discourse, little narratives, postmodernist, poststructuralist
Stuart Sim was Professor of Critical Theory and Long Eighteenth-Century English Literature at Northumbria University until his retirement in 2013. His books include Negotiations with Paradox: Narrative Practice and Narrative Form in Bunyan and Defoe (1990), Bunyan and Authority (co-authored, 2000), John Bunyan and his England 1628–88 (co-ed., 1990), Reception, Appropriation, Recollection: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (co-ed., 2007), and, more recently, Fifty Key Postmodern Thinkers (2013), A Philosophy of Pessimism (2015), and The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Theory (ed., 2016).
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- The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Abbreviations
- Notes on Contributors
- Bunyan’s Life: Some Significant Dates
- Introduction: Bunyan’s Presence
- Bunyan’s Life, Bunyan’s Lives
- Bunyan’s England: The Trials and Triumphs of Restoration Dissent
- Bunyan and the Bedford Congregation
- Bunyan’s Theology and Religious Context
- Bunyan and the Word
- Bunyan’s Reading
- Bunyan and Gender
- ‘Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate’: Bunyan and the Writing of Dissent
- Bunyan’s Partners in Print
- Early Works: Bunyan in the 1650s
- Bunyan in Prison: Writings from the 1660s
- <i>Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners</i> (1666)
- ‘The Desired Countrey’: Bunyan’s Writings on the Church in the 1670s
- The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678): Chasing Apollyon’s Tale
- <i>The Life and Death of Mr. Badman</i> (1680)
- <i>The Holy War</i> (1682)
- Piety and Radicalism: Bunyan’s Writings of the 1680s
- <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II</i> (1684)
- ‘Truth in Meeter’: Bunyan’s Poetry and Dissenting Poetics
- Bunyan’s Posthumously Published Works
- Bunyan, Emblem, and Allegory
- Bunyan and Romance
- The Prose Style of John Bunyan
- The Language of <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress</i>
- ‘Nor do thou go to work without my Key’: Reading Bunyan Out to the Edges
- Bunyan and the Historians
- Bunyan Unbound: Prison and the Place of Creativity
- Bunyan, Poststructuralism, and Postmodernism
- Bunyan, Theory, and Theology: A Case for Post-Secular Criticism
- Bunyan and the Early Novel
- <i>The Pilgrim’s Progress</i> in the Evangelical Revival
- Bunyan and the Romantics
- Bunyan and the Victorians
- Bunyan and America
- Bunyan: Class and Englishness
- Wayfaring Images: The Pilgrim’s Pictorial Progress
- Bunyan for Children
- Bunyan and Empire
- Index