A Tentative Feminist Exploration Of The Innovation And Evolution Of The Pilgrim's Progress-in Comparison With The Bible

The Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress are two famous and influential religious literature works worldwide. Although women images are presented both in the two works, they have different fate and treatment in these two books. The theme of the thesis is to compare the women status between the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress, criticize the wrong tendency in the Bible and set up The Pilgrim's Progress as excellent representative. It hopes to reinterpret the objective female images and establish the correct feminist attitude through the comparison of the two Christian works, and then appeal more attention and carefulness for women in the religious literature field.The thesis is composed of four parts. Chapter One is the introduction. It introduces the writing purpose, the key investigative issue, the theme, the writing method, the characteristics, and the current researching status of relative topics; it also introduces the famous author John Bunyan, the two great works the Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress, the Feminist Criticism, the feminist representative Phillis Triple and her Hermeneutics of Departrarchizing and the Rhetoric Critique of Sexism.Chapter Two unveils the dark and misery situation of women in the Bible. It finds the regular absence of female, exposes the women's invisibility, and reveals the ignorant and inhospitable manner to female in the Bible. Then it digs out a lot of horrible tales about women in the Bible, which proves the demonization to female in the Bible. Furthermore, it illustrates a large amount of texts in which there are serious discrimination and maltreatment to female, exposes and denounces them in this part.Chapter Three elaborates the inheritance and development of The Pilgrim's Progress to the Bible from three aspects: first, it discusses the Bible's influence on John Bunyan and his masterpiece The Pilgrim's Progress; second, it analyzes the inheritance of The Pilgrim's Progress to the Bible; third, it demonstrates the development of The Pilgrim's Progress to the Bible.Chapter Four is the Conclusion: it sums up the theme of the whole text, points out the current status of women in the literature field, appeals for more attention and assistance to female, and finally puts forward some suggestions and solutions to solve this problem.All in all, this thesis focuses on the female images and status in the religious literature works, while Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress are just the two opposite version, so it may stand out the key issue through the comparison of these two works. By means of the criticism to Bible and the praise of The Pilgrim's Progress, first it may better reveal the status quo of women in the religious literature field, and second it may provide a feasible way and a perfect model John Bunyan to the subsequent writers, at last it hopes to wake up people's recognition to women's equal rights and social status.