英美文学选读学习笔记 John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was born into a poor tinker's family in Bedfordshire in 1628. He received very little formal education. When he was still a little boy, he took up his father's trade, and had the least promise of becoming a writer. But the boy had a profound imagination. His marriage in 1647 with a Christian woman led him to the Lord.  He joined a Nonconformist church and began to ach, by the roadside or on the village green, telling people of his vision and intertation of God's doctrine. However, he was thrown into prison in 1660 for aching without receiving permission from the Established Church. He remained in prison for 12 years because of his refusing to take a vow to give up aching. He was imprisoned again in 1675 on charge of the same offence. It was during this second term in prison that he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, which was published in 1678 after his release. He died in 1688 from a bad fever.

Like most working men at the time, Bunyan had a deep hatred for the corrupted, hypocritical rich who accumulated their wealth "by hook and by crook." As a stout Puritan, he had made a conscientious study of the Bible and firmly believed in salvation through spiritual struggle.

Bunyan's style was modeled after that of the English Bible. With his concrete and living language and carefully observed and vividly sented details: he made it possible for the reader of the least education to share the pleasure of reading his novel and to relive the experience of his characters.

Bunyan's other works include Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682) and The Pilgrim's Progress, Part II(1684).