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We must in fact judge the allegory of the Holy War for what it is.
(E. M. W. Tillyard)
Perhaps it is fair to say that few early-modern texts have elicited so much judgemental criticism as has Bunyan's Holy War. Whilst reviewing the scholarship on this great, complex narrative, I became intrigued by a pattern which recurred with remarkable consistency, and seemingly regardless of historical period or theoretical orientation. Since Bunyan's identification in the late-nineteenth century as an object of academic attention, The Holy War has been dogged by unusually categorical judgements, and by pointed critical silences which are at odds with the attention devoted to his other major works.
Indeed, much modern criticism of The Holy War has been characterised by a pervasive refrain of 'failure' - a strong vocabulary by any standards of judicious critical practice. In 1880, James Froude declared that the text failed 'as a work of art'; for William York Tindall in 1934, it succumbed to 'comparative failure' due to Bunyan's alleged inability to handle the 'complications' of his text. Writing in 1951, Henri Talon blamed the 'ambitiousness' of Bunyan's design for the work's 'partial failure', while Tillyard, some three years later, pondered its 'partial success' - a year in which Roger Sharrock conceded that The Holy War was a 'magnificent failure.' Donald Mackenzie went on to pronounce in 1990 a 'serious charge' against the work, namely its failure 'as apocalypse'. Meanwhile, Christopher Hill - a most dedicated Bunyanist - declared in 1988 that, 'as an epic', The Holy War had 'disastrous results' for which 'the allegorical form is partly to blame': Bunyan's theology, he continues, 'got in the way' despite the 'many marvellous phrases' which he concedes are to be found in the work.2 Voiced from diverse critical standpoints, the cumulative impact of these verdicts is remarkable.
Over the last decade or so, The Holy War has met with relative silence rather than outright censure, as studies of its author have continued to focus predominantly on The Pilgrim 's Progress and Grace Abounding? This situation is all the more remarkable in light of modern theoretical developments, and the proliferation in Bunyan scholarship which expanded around the 1988 tercentenary and has flourished ever since with a healthy diversity. While two...