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John Bunyan and the Puritan idea of art

Page 6


The implications of this for literature in general were far-reaching and help to explain Puritan condemnations of romances, ballads, poetry and drama. To say that Bunyan was not aware of these views would not square with the evidence of tension in his works between the romance and the literal didactic modes. Unless we seek to explain Bunyan's genius as stemming solely from a repudiation of these values, we must determine to what extent did these implications provide a hostile or friendly climate for the creation of a Pilgrim's Progress.

Whilst there was an abundance of attacks on the stage in Puritan writings, attitudes towards non-dramatic literature appear reticent . There are no books or pamphlets that are directed against it, and indeed, there seem to be very few even about non-dramatic literature, which leads us to rely on sources that are not only widely scattered, but often brief, oblique and inconclusive .

Baxter summarises for us what must have been a real worry for the Puritan minister, namely that people were wasting their time reading popular literature, when they should be spending such time improving themselves. Edification was seen as the chief end of literature. He argues that, ‘playbooks, romances and Idle tales' are unGodly because they drew people away from the things that were necessary to study, away from ‘the Lawes of God', and 'those profitable treatises of divines that the world aboundeth in'. (A Treatise on Self-Denial, 1675, PP .157-9) Such reading 'dangerously corrupteth and bewitcheth the minds of young and empty people’ (ibid.), it is 'the poison of youth' , and the 'food and work of empty , vicious graceless persons ' (ibid). That non-dramatic literature, especially ballads and romances, were seen by the Puritans as rivals to the word of God is shown by Nicholas Bownds’ remark that 'when the light of one Gospel came first in, the singing of ballads... began to cease ' . (Sabbathum Veteris et Novi Testamenti , London 1670 p.426). He is referring to his own times, when there were many ministers translating the Psalms into metrical hymns, and some critics have suggested that this was a conscious attempt to replace the ballad in the popular imagination (see L. Sasak, The Literary Temper of English Puritans, Illinois,1961)