English

My doctoral work was on Bunyan, and I have remained interested and active in Bunyan studies, with a number of articles over the years. Currently I am finishing an edition of The Pilgrim's Progress . I am Treasurer of the International John Bunyan Society. I would be interested in supervising work on Bunyan and his contemporaries (a student of mine has recently and successfully finished a thesis on The Holy War). More generally, I work on the seventeenth century, particularly on prose, fiction and non-fiction. I am writing an entry on early modern literature for the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature and developing a longer study on the figure of the atheist in early modern literature and theology. My own critical standpoint, I usually say, is that of a Bakhtinian Christian who has never forgotten being taught by Raymond Williams.