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  • Pilgrim's Progress as a Fairy-Tale
  • Alison White (bio)

The vogue for J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy may have something in common with the three hundred years' "vogue" for John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The thirst of readers for Bunyan has abated somewhat during the past generation or two, but the fervor with which the young today contemplate Tolkien's elfin heroes in their crusades against the Dark Riders in Mirkwood suggests that themes of spiritual earnestness clothed in an entertainment of marvels and perils, maintain their hold. To play with the idea that Pilgrim's Progress and Lord of the Rings have links is tempting. Tolkien's Frodo is a battling pilgrim of Christian's stamp. Gandalf, the benign wizard, is Frodo's Evangelist. In Bunyan's Dark Land, Valiant-for-Truth prefigures Tolkien's heroic Strider. In accounting for his romances, Tolkien has analyzed what he directly calls fairy-tale. The term is uneasy; it should perhaps be confined to tales in which there are fairies. Faerie as a name, however, was imaginatively extended in such ballads as "Thomas Rhymer" and also in Spenser and Keats. The dim, marvel-steeped terrain of Pilgrim's Progress in no way resembles Bunyan's England, or any earthly kingdom. It is Faerie—if we can extend that realm to include the landscapes of Revelation. By importing a dragon and a woman, among other Apocalyptic apparitions, Spenser brought Revelation into Faerie. Bunyan did the same. And the term fairy-tale has been loosened by others of Bunyan's literary descendants besides Tolkien. Pilgrim's Progress fathered a succession of literary fantasies by such clergymen as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), George Macdonald, and Charles Kingsley. Though fairies were absent from it, Lewis Carroll called Alice in Wonderland this "love-gift of a fairy-tale." A literary follower of Bunyan, George Macdonald, wrote romances, he said, to help people who sought truth in a nutshell because they could not "see the fairy-tale in the mustard-seed. " Bunyan saw the fairy-tale in the mustard-seed, in the burning bush, in Aaron's rod, and the fiery chariot. I plead that fairy-tale has been so dignified by its practitioners—lovers and imitators of Bunyan—that, in its more fanciful aspects, Pilgrim's Progress may be dubbed an evangelical fairy-tale.

To return to the Tolkien-like Valiant-for-Truth, a Strider in his murky Dark-Land, let us hear from his lips what his parents had told him about Christian and his Progress. All that Valiant relates is folklorish. He has missed all the allegory, even as did countless thousands of child readers of Bunyan. Valiant says: "They (his parents) told me of the Slough of Despond, where Christian was well-nigh smothered. They told me that there were archers standing ready in Beelzebub's Castle, to shoot them that should knock at the wicket-gate for entrance. They told me also of the wood, and dark mountains, of the Hill Difficulty, of the lions, and also of the three giants, Bloodyman, Maul, and Slay-Good. They said, moreover that there was a foul fiend haunted the valley of Humiliation and the Christian was by him almost bereft of life. Besides, said they, you must go over the [End Page 42] Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the hobgoblins are, where the light is darkness, where the way is full of snares, pits, traps, and gins. They told me also of Giant Despair, of Doubting Castle, and of the ruins that the pilgrims met with there. Further, they said I must go over the Enchanted Ground, which was dangerous. And that after all this I should find a river, over which I should find no bridge, and that that river did lie betwixt me and the Celestial Country." Then Valiant sings the fine Pilgrim song which was so moving a part of the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill: "Who would true valour see,/ Let him come hither;/ One here will constant be/ Come wind, come weather./ There's no discouragement/ Shall make him once relent/ His first avowed intent/ To be a pilgrim./ Hobgoblin...

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