The Honesty of the Transparent Soul: Self-Deprecation in the Spiritual Autobiographies of John Bunyan and C.S. Lewis
Few writers have enjoyed the worldwide acclaim and assurance of continued readership as John Bunyan and C. S. Lewis. Readers familiar with these authors’ works—Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Holy War and Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and The Allegory of Love, to name a few—point to the edifying, instructive, scholarly (in Lewis’s case) and imaginative aspects of their writings. But many readers may not be aware of the inner doubt and emotional turmoil which both experienced at formative times of their lives. Only by reading the spiritual autobiographies of these writers can the reader appreciate their honesty and transparency as they chronicle the details of their insecurities and even self-condemnation. In John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the author describes himself as “great and grievous sinner” while Lewis, discussing his time at Wyvern College, came to the awareness that being at that school had most surely turned him into a “prig, a spiritual highbrow.” Both of these authors, whose works continue to inspire both scholarly and popular analysis, tell their stories with candor and self-deprecation. My paper will examine the common themes of their spiritual autobiographies and examine particularly the influence of Bunyan’s allegorical and autobiographical works on Lewis’s on autobiographies, both Surprised by Joy and The Pilgrim’s Regress.
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