History Literature / ThePilgrimsRegress

* AuthorTract: Seems like C. S. Lewis appreciated {{Romanticism}}...

* AuthorTract: [[SarcasmMode If only there was some way of telling]] whether C. S. Lewis appreciated {{Romanticism}}...

* EnemyMine: Mr. Neo-Angular, Mr. Neo-Classical, and Mr. Humanist representing Catholicism, Classicism, and Humanism respectively despite being siblings are hate each other, but are trying to form a community together as they all hate; the giant "Spirit of the Age", the city of Eschropolis, and Mr Halfways.

* [[GratuitousEnglish Gratuitous French]]: Mr Sensible likes throwing in French when he speaks for some reason.

* {{God}}: Allegorized as "the Landlord."

''The Pilgrim's Regress'' is an {{allegor|y}}ical novel by Creator/CSLewis, dramatizing the process of his [[HeelFaithTurn conversion]] from Atheism to Christianity and [[AuthorTract defending his love for]] {{Romanticism}} in literature and music. It was his first published work of fiction, and his first writing after his conversion.

* {{Allegory}}: In spades! Despite some critics saying that ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' is "allegorical," by the way, this book is the only proper allegory Lewis wrote. (''Narnia'' is {{applicability}}.)

* BoringReturnJourney: Played with. After John's conversion, he realizes that the only way to reach his island was east of his old home, and he's been traveling roughly west for his entire journey. (Hence the word "regress" in the title.) The narrative doesn't skip over John's return journey, but it's much shorter (both in time and in number of pages) than the trip out. Heading west, John had wandered and meandered quite a bit, but heading east, he sticks to the straight and narrow path to his destination. And on the trip back, he finds the landscape has completely changed--or rather, because of his conversion, he sees the world as it truly is for the first time.

* RomanticismVersusEnlightenment: Lewis comes down firmly on the side of Romanticism, but insists that reasoning is also an essential part of the process. A healthy balance between the two is key.

** He also observes that having a character named "Mother Kirk" made it seem (wrongly) that he was arguing for a specific ecclesiastical position, when in fact he only chose it because he thought "UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}}" was an unconvincing character name.

* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: Well, why ''shouldn't'' [[RomanticismVersusEnlightenment Romanticisim and Enlightenment]] be allegorized as dragon for our heroes to slay?

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: Again in the introduction to the third edition, Lewis surveys several differing meanings of the word "Romantic" and determines that none of them meant exactly what he was getting at in the book. (He was trying to describe a longing for beauty or ''Sehnsucht'', which he personally often found in [[{{Romanticism}} "romantic" art]].) He concludes that the word is far too ambiguous and should be avoided.

* YouKeepUsingThatWord: Again in the introduction to the third edition, Lewis surveys several differing meanings of the word "Romantic" and determines that none of them meant exactly what he was getting at in the book. (He was trying to describe a longing for beauty or ''Sensucht'', which he personally often found in [[{{Romanticism}} "romantic" art]].) He concludes that the word is far too ambiguous and should be avoided.

The story traces the wanderings of an [[TheEveryman Everyman]] character named John, who leaves his boyhood home in [[TheFundamentalist Puritania]] in search of a beautiful island that has enthralled him since childhood. Accompanied by his traveling companion Vertue, John journeys through bizarre lands and encounters many characters and monsters that represent various philosophical and ideological movements that were in vogue in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eventually, though, John begins to realize uncomfortably that his quest for the Island might be taking him back toward his abandoned belief in the existence of [[{{God}} the Landlord]]....

* TheWarOnStraw: In an introduction to a later edition of the book, Lewis admits that his younger self wasn't entirely fair to all the ideologies he was criticizing at the time.

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: The Northern dragon is made of fire and the Southern dragon is made of ice. Both of them have to be killed in different ways.

The story traces the wanderings of an [[TheEveryman Everyman]] character named John, who leaves his boyhood home in [[TheFundamentalist Puritania]] in search of a beautiful island that has enthralled him since childhood. Accompanied by his traveling companion Vertue, John journeys through bizarre lands and encounters many characters and monsters that represent various philosophical and ideological movements that were in vogue in the 1930s. Eventually, though, John begins to realize uncomfortably that his quest for the Island might be taking him back toward his abandoned belief in the existence of [[{{God}} the Landlord]]....

The title, of course, is a [[LiteraryAllusionTitle shout-out]] to John Bunyan's ''Literature/ThePilgrimsProgress''.

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: [[invoked]] Also {{parodied}} with the singing of Glugly, who cannot speak owing to an accident at birth, so just babbles and makes rude noises.

* LiteraryAllusionTitle: To John Bunyan's ''Literature/ThePilgrimsProgress'', of course. Lewis makes it a a PerspectiveFlip as the title character has to find his way back to a belief in reason and God, unlike Bunyan's story which begins with the conversion.

* TheEveryman: John, the pilgrim of the title. However, Lewis later realized that his own journey to faith (represented in John's journey) was a lot more personal and individual than he had assumed.

''The Pilgrim's Regress'' is an {{allegor|y}}ical novel by Creator/CSLewis, dramatizing the process of his [[HeelFaithTurn conversion]] from Atheism to Christianity and [[AuthorTract defending his love for]] {{Romanticism}} in literature and music. It was his first published work of fiction, and his first writing after his conversion

The title, of course, is a shout-out to John Bunyan's ''Literature/ThePilgrimsProgress''.

''The Pilgrim's Regress'' is an {{allegor|y}}ical novel by Creator/CSLewis, dramatizing the process of his [[HeelFaithTurn conversion]] from Atheism to Christianity and [[AuthorTract defending his love for]] {{Romanticism}} in literature and music. It was his first published work of fiction.

* PerverseSexualLust: Sexual temptation is personified in the "Brown Girls."