The Pilgrim's Progress in American Juvenile Literature 1860-1900

John Bunyan's Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress has had an undeniable impact on America. As one of the most influential religious works of the seventeenth century, it was widely read throughout the centuries and is presumably still read today in religious circles as well as university classrooms. In what way this work seems to have been an inspiration for several American authors will be analyzed in the course of this study. As a necessary prerequisite one needs to examine Bunyan's work as well as the circumstances marked by the Civil War. Some analysis will be targeted at why The Pilgrim's Progress was thought especially suitable for children. This work will describe in detail in how the American juvenile novel published between 1860 and 1900 makes use of this allegory. The intertextual dependence of the novels with Bunyan's work is analyzed. This book also tries to point out to which extent the religious "pretext" is secularized in the novels.