SOURCE: Swaim, Kathleen M. “The Allegorical Way.” In Pilgrim's Progress, Puritan Progress: Discourses and Contexts, pp. 18-41. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Swaim examines aspects of allegory and how Bunyan uses the genre for his purpose in Pilgrim's Progress.

Bunyan so intensely presents the Christian life, so urgently wishes to communicate actuality to the reader, is such a psychological realist and didactic in so evangelical a fashion, that the convention of mediaeval allegory is given new shape and new pressure, losing its point by point applicability, shifting rapidly, passing from figurative representation to actuality and back again as easily as scripture does and making each episode mean the whole. There are incongruities but there is complete unity of theme, intention, plot, characters, ornaments, illustrations, biblical references, and allegory. Every character may be the reader.

—Roy Daniells, Milton, Mannerism and Baroque

Difficult to categorize, Pilgrim's...