Title
The Pilgrim's Progress DISSECTED
Datec. 1790
Mediumwood
Dimensions1 3/8 × 4 1/2 × 6 1/4 in. (3.5 × 11.4 × 15.9 cm)
Object number00.53.341
Institutional Credit LineCourtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum
DescriptionA wooden box with a sliding lid containing 30 puzzle pieces. The puzzle is incomplete. The lid reads 'The Pilgrim's Progress DISSECTED or a Complete View of CHRISTIAN'S TRAVELS from the City of Destruction to the HOLY LAND.' John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (full title: The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream) published in 1678 is one of the most influential Protestant narratives. Not only did it inspire generations of Protestant readers, but it shaped the form of the novel as it developed over the eighteenth-century to tell stories of individual development. In the nineteenth-century, its allegorical structure of the physical stages of "progress" influenced writers such as William Makepeace Thackeray in Vanity Fair and Louisa May Alcott in Little Women. This 1790 "Pilgrim's Progress Dissected, or a Complete View of Christian's Travels from the City of Destruction to the Holy Land" was published in London by John Wallis, a well-known publisher of juvenile maps and games. Like the Bunyan's narrative itself, this puzzle map invites its users (children and adults alike) to experience the journey of Bunyan's pilgrim through the process of constructing the trials, temptations, and rewards of the Protestant life.On View
Not on view
4/19/1902
