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Due to their popularity and brilliant prominence, various views and evaluations have been given on the two novels by critics.
Writers and scholars highly praise the great achievements John Bunyan has made in Pilgrim’s Progress and reference to the title of the novel has become a regular practice. Among them are The Patriot’s Progress by Henry Williamson (1930), The Land of Far Beyond by Enid Blyton (1942), New York Evening Telegram by Winsor McCay (1905). Mark Twain gave his 1869 travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, the alternate title The New Pilgrims’ Progress. In Twain’s later work Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huckleberry Finn mentions The Pilgrim’s Progress as he describes the works of literature in the Grangerfords’ library. Twain uses this to satirize the Protestant southern aristocracy. Prospero’s Men, having become wayward on his journey during his visit in Vanity Fair, stepped down an alleyway and found himself in London in the 1670s and unable to return to his homeland. This group disbanded in 1690 after Prospero vanished into the Blazing World; however, some parts of the text seem to imply that Christian resigned from Prospero’s league before its disbanding and that Christian traveled to the Blazing World before Prospero himself. The apparent implication is that within the context of the League stories the Celestial City Christian seeks and the Blazing World may in fact be one and the same. Henry Williamson’s The Patriot’s Progress refers to the title of The Pilgrim’s Progress and the symbolic nature of John Bunyan’s work. The protagonist of the semi-autobiographical novel is John Bullock, the quintessential English soldier during World War I. All these demonstrate the tremendous influence of Pilgrim’s Progress.
Various views and praises are also given to the status and role of Journey to the West in the literary world as well. Literary critic Edith Sitwell characterized Monkey as “a masterpiece of right sound”, “absence of shadow, like the clearance and directness of Monkey’s mind.”(1983:34) Chinese professor David Lattimore described it as a “minor landmark of 20th-century English translation”, though adding that it had been overtaken as the most authoritative English edition with the publication of Anthony C. Yu’s four-volumes, unabridged translation published in the late 1970s and early 80s from the University of Chicago Press.(1977:14) Nonetheless, as noted by Elaine Yee Lin Ho, Monkey remains “the most popular and textually accessible translation” of Journey to the West (2000:154)
Andrew H. Plaks’s focus on a wealth of materials creates a far-reaching hypothesis about the consolidation of the novel form in China. Plaks argues that even though the Chinese novel had its prototypes somewhat earlier, the edition of Shui-hu and His-yu chi that came out around the turn of the seventeenth century, together with the earliest edition of Chin P’ing Mei, can collectively be regarded as a milestone in the development of Chinese fiction. Furthermore, although San-kuo yen-i achieved its full-length form somewhat earlier, it can be associated with these “masterworks” through stylistic and intellectual parallels. （1987:183-186）
The above-mentioned reviews and essays show that the focus of criticism has been mainly on analyses of The Pilgrim’s Progress and Journey to the west. Yet to my disappointment, there does not appear to be much literature comparing the two novels. This absence arouses my interest in scratching this unexplored area. This paper is aimed at enhancing understanding of the two novels and analyzing the literary features in them. In this research, a great deal of literary text will be cited and reviewed. In this study, a comparative method will be used to reflect the differences between A journey to the west and The pilgrim’s progress. Meanwhile, contrastive methods will establish a theoretical framework. This thesis illustrates that the same approach to different routes may result to the same destiny. Then with the aid of the comparative method and some reference books, we can analyze the differences in name, place, theme and similar spirit and significance. Hopefully, my exploration will make the study of these two novels a bit richer.