The Pilgrim’s Progress : Allegory or novel?

Abstract

A tradition going back to Coleridge asserts that The Pilgrim’s Progress is not a true allegory but rather a proto-novel expressive of early modern individualism. The work is radically individualistic, but it is also truly an allegory. Recent research has emphasized how closely related metaphor often is to metonymy and how intimately the two can interact to produce metaphtonymy. This interaction is just as important in allegory as in purely linguistic metaphor and metonymy. The Pilgrim’s Progress makes subtle use of conceptual metaphtonymy to express its individualism. Although the degree of individualism these cognitive structures express is greater than anything in earlier allegorical tradition, the structures themselves are inherited from medieval allegories such as Everyman. This sharing of major cognitive structure with earlier medieval allegories shows that The Pilgrim’s Progress is truly an allegory. An area in which the interaction of metaphor and metonymy is particularly notable is that of blending. The occurrence of highly creative blending in at least some of its scenes is further evidence for the truly allegoric nature of The Pilgrim’s Progress.