A first person Pilgrim’s Progress dating to the 14th century, relatively unknown but still makes powerful and challenging reading. In particular, the explicitly autobiographical passages can cut uncomfortably close to the bone.

The Dreamer/narrator is an inadvertent pilgrim: beginning as an observer of the world and its failings (and by implications his own), he is drawn into the search for what ‘Do-well’ might mean, but gains little enlightenment from the intellectual faculties: Wit, Study, Learning or
Imagination. This is the first part of the poem.

In the second part the Dreamer, having left these faculties behind, sets out on pilgrimage with Patience and Conscience; he is witness to Christ’s conquest of death and harrowing of Hell, and wakes on Easter morning resolved to honour the Cross as the only assurance of salvation.

In the third part Holy Church, newly founded, is assailed by adversaries of every kind; when corruption enters, Conscience must set out again in search of the Plowman – Petrus, id est Christus – the figure who connects the human with the divine. While life lasts, that pilgrimage cannot be completed.

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