"As seventeenth-century nonconformist writer and preacher, John Bunyan discovered that the power of awakening words - words that both define and unite his ministerial and literary vocations - effected not only the conversion of individuals but also the gathering and consolidating of communities. Placed under the stress of the sectarian division that characterized the religious radicalism of the seventeenth century, and most markedly the suppression and persecution of nonconformity under the Restoration regime after 1660, Bunyan's language of community modulates through successive literary and political contexts as he seeks to mediate between his audience and the troubling polarities of the fictional words he creates and the actual world he confronts. Writing from the model and authority of scripture, Bunyan offers his readers fictional narratives and theological treatises that variously challenge, resist, invert, and imaginatively transform, the conditions under which they are written."--BOOK JACKET.