Novelistic Allegories

The excerpts from Pilgrim’s Progress and Gulliver’s Travels are examples of allegorical prose works that are ancestors of the novel. In an essay of 1,000-1,400 words, use the tools of allegorical interpretation you learned earlier in the course, pick one incident in both books, and analyze each allegory in detail. Then, consider the point of each allegory: Bunyan and Swift write with different purposes, and the type of journey described in each book indicates that. What is Bunyan’s overall purpose, and what is Swift’s, and how can you tell? Finally, novels are defined as long fictional narratives in prose that deal with the concerns of ordinary middle-class people, using realistic characters and situations. Where do you see this kind of realism in each book?

Use specific quotations and paraphrases from each work as evidence for the points you make.