6 - The Holy War

Summary

In 1682 Bunyan returned to allegory, publishing The Holy War, a history of ‘the Town of Mansoul’. The Holy War is arguably the most atypical of Bunyan's works in form: an ambitious, multilevel allegorical epic that is grander and apparently more detached in style than his earlier writings. Bunyan's prose is still, at its best, distinctively colloquial and warmed by the imagery and diction of rural and small-town life of the period, but the structure is certainly more elaborate and his authorial stance less overtly personal. As the editors of the Oxford University Press edition of the text note, the author is ‘no longer the dreamer, but an observer’. Yet this stylistic detachment and literary complexity belie the fact that this is, like its predecessors, a committed text with a redemptive purpose: a story to engage, and entertain, its readers as a means to call them to repentance and, God willing, to salvation. This simple fact is one that has all-too-often been overlooked, or undervalued, in critical readings and evaluations of the text since its publication. Bunyan's position as author is never detached. One critic has rightly observed, that Bunyan's stance in The Holy War is that of the prophet and, while the literary qualities of the allegory are notable, this prophetic engagement with the times and destiny of its readers alone makes it worthy of attention.

Bunyan's second allegory dramatizes what Roger Sharrock called ‘the second great metaphor of Christian experience’, turning from pilgrimage to warfare, but as in The Pilgrim's Progress, his subject is the struggle for redemption. This story, as grimly entertaining as it is, is offered to the reader as an alternative to ‘vain stories’ because ‘Til they know this, [they] are to themselves unknown’ (HW 1); it is as much the story of a soul as Christian's journey.

The Holy War is an allegory of the history of an individual soul, here presented as a city, Mansoul, created by King Shaddai (God the Father), that is repeatedly besieged by the forces of Diabolus (Satan), and granted hope of salvation by Shaddai's son Emanuel (Jesus).