John Bunyan’s Master Story: The Holy War as Battle Allegory in Religious and Biblical Context by Daniel Runyon (review)

239 WINTON DEAN. Handel’s Operas, 1726–1741. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006. Pp. xx ⫹ 565. $95; £49.95. Mr. Dean’s Handel bibliography is the culmination of three massive volumes of exemplary scholarship, beginning with Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (1959) and continuing with Handel’s Operas, 1704–1726, jointly written with J. Merrill Knapp (1987), their group acquisition mandatory for music libraries and British collections . The present book covers Handel ’s original operas from 1726 (Alessandro ) to 1741 (Deidamia), a total of twenty-two works spanning four periods : the composer’s final seasons in the Royal Academy of Music, marked by rising tension between his female singers Cuzzoni and Faustina (1726–1728); the ‘‘Second Academy’’ years, when Handel jointly produced operas with John James Heidegger (1729–1734); his years as independent producer at Covent Garden theater in direct opposition to the ‘‘Nobility’’ opera (1734–1737); and his last productions of 1738–1741, at a time when he was consciously exploring English oratorios and odes. Mr. Dean’s choice of assigning individual chapters to each opera brings the book close to the tradition of encyclopedias. Its five Appendices range from structural analysis and instrumentation of the operas to performance lists. Although Mr. Dean has written primarily for connoisseurs, he also introduces each opera with a detailed account of its plot, and prefaces the four sets of chapters with general essays on Handel’s career and its historical context . Mr. Dean’s dramatic content of Handel’s operas is the book’s greatest strength and limitation. Born in 1916, the author grew up in a world that had little appreciation for this archaic repertory . To right the wrong and reverse a tradition of neglect, he consciously stresses their aesthetic side, examining them as self-contained dramas. Several touch modern listeners and vindicate his choice. Still, we should recall that Handel ’s operas were not as fixed as those of Mozart and Verdi. Dependent on cast and production, they mirrored their historical circumstances. By treating them autonomously, Mr. Dean comes closer to Romantic aesthetics than to operatic reality in Georgian England. Recent Handelian scholarship’s fixation with opera is a tribute to Mr. Dean’s work. But the claim that Handel’s operas are dramatic masterpieces condemned to oblivion since 1741 clashes with the historical record: Handel himself abandoned the genre for English oratorio and never sought to revive it. Are musicologists better judges of operas than their own creators? Thus the modern enthusiasm for Handel the dramatist has no firm historical grounding. The critic’s right to reassess the past based on personal taste and sensitivity cannot substitute for historical research. Although Mr. Dean’s Handelian trilogy marks a peak in twentiethcentury music criticism, it should not crystallize into a dogma that excludes historical roots. DANIEL RUNYON. John Bunyan’s Master Story: The Holy War as Battle Allegory in Religious and Biblical Context . Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen. 2007. Pp. iii ⫹ 275. $109.95. There has been an identifiable trend in Bunyan scholarship in recent years to re-emphasize the religious dimension of the author’s works and to call into question politicized readings of the kind in- 240 spired by Christopher Hill. These critics saw Bunyan’s religion through a political lens, and works such as The Pilgrim ’s Progress as ideologically subversive critiques of the Restoration regime. For Hill, Bunyan was a spokesperson of a class-conscious nonconformity, and that explained the fascination of The Pilgrim’s Progress for political radicals. Bunyan’s theology was regarded as an adjunct to his political radicalism. Michael Davies’s Graceful Reading: Theology and Narrative in the Work of John Bunyan (2002) was a notable attempt to recast the terms of debate on Bunyan, and Mr. Runyon follows suit. Davies and Mr. Runyon feel Hill’s approach distorts Bunyan’s intentions unacceptably. Mr. Runyon’s particular concern is to reestablish the theological credentials of The Holy War, and to reveal what to him is the hitherto unappreciated depth of its dialogue with the Bible. Where other critics have found contradictions and paradoxes in the theological message, he finds instead internal consistency and an unambiguous Christian moral. To rescue Bunyan from the Hill-inspired school...