Dante, Bunyan and the Case for a Protestant Aesthetics

Abstract:  This article argues that, despite common assumptions, Protestants possess a unique aesthetic framework. Building on seventeenth-century ideas of the 'Protestant reader', aesthetic attitudes in Dante's Divine Comedy are contrasted with those in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress . Dante's emphasis on images which spark desire is contrasted with Bunyan's hermeneutic of suspicion; the role of seeing in one replaced by reading in the other. This leads to an aesthetic framework emphasizing the brokenness of the world and a distrust of earthly beauty; a preference for aesthetic forms whose 'beauty' is hidden or allusive; and a prophetic engagement and resistance against the world's brokenness.