John Bunyan, Dissenter

With his study of John Bunyan Jack Lindsay moved away from text-based analysis to take a range of contextual factors into account. He adapts Freudian psychology to study the author’s personal life, though emphasises that this is used in relation to the social environment, creating a kind of social-psychology. He studies the social and political environment by reference to the English Civil War of Bunyan’s youth, which raised issues of freedom and self-determination for individual citizens. He also considers the religious conflict within which Bunyan became embroiled and how the State Church of England acted as a divine guarantor and validation of the reigning political power, using its power to affect individuals bodily (through senses, emotions and intellect) to create submissive subjects—or not.