Referenced By / The Pilgrim's Progress

References to The Pilgrim's Progress in other works.

Literature

• In Alien in a Small Town, Paul compares his Anguished Declaration of Love to the burden falling from the back of Bunyan's hero. Indira also at one point describes the city outside her little town as having a Vanity Faire quality to it.
• Chasing Butterflies: The Vanity Rail is a shout-out to the Vanity Fair, with Mr. Hive taking the place of Beelzebub.
• Hester volume 3, chapter 5:

Catherine: What do I care for your maids and their lovers? You can settle these surely without me.
Matilda: Oh, if you will only wait a little! Very soon we could hear that it was, if you please, Miss Hester's voice, and she was inviting some one in. Oh, pressing him—almost forcing him. Shouldn't you say so Martha? like the woman in the Pilgrim's Progress.

• Hieroglyphics: In putting forth his theory, Machen examines a vast amount of works, including The Pilgrim's Progress.
• Little Women: The book is fraught with Shout Outs and Homages to The Pilgrim's Progress.
• The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis can be seen as a (then) modern, less unsubtle counterpart to The Pilgrim's Progress. Both works are allegories for the Christian faith where almost every character represents an ideology or a personal vice, and they both turn out to be dreams at the end.
• C. S. Lewis also wrote The Pilgrim's Regress, which was more blatantly inspired by Bunyan's work right down to the title.
• The Quest for Karla: Smiley's go-to alias of "Mr Standfast".
• The title of Mr. Standfast comes from The Pilgrim's Progress, which is also alluded to throughout the text.
• Vanity Fair: The title. "Vanity Fair" was originally a fair held in the sinful town of Vanity that sat athwart the road to Heaven.
• Vorkosigan Saga: A passage from The Pilgrim's Progress, never explicitly identified as such (a character thinks it is "scripture" of some kind) plays a role in "The Borders of Infinity".

Live Action TV

• Doctor Who: In "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" Litefoot quotes from The Pilgrim's Progress.

Music

• Danzig's music video for Mother uses a quote from the book as an epigraph.
  And there I saw there was a path to Hell, even from the gates of Heaven.