These treatises, written in the year of Bunyan's death, 1688, are edited from the first editions: one of which was published in his lifetime, the others posthumously. Variations in the traditional typological method of biblical interpretation, they concentrate on Old Testament events as prophecies that eventually found fulfillment in the New Testament. Solomon's Temple, his House of the Forest of Lebanon, and the water flowing from beneath the altar of the Temple, help to demonstrate how these are all shadows of the true reality to come in the life and faith of Christ. In a wider context, the book provides examples of another kind of "similitude"--the creative techniques by which Bunyan sought to capture the imagination, and which encompasses simile, metaphor, emblem, symbol, analogy, and above all, allegory.

A scholarly edition of The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan: Barren Fig-Tree; Strait Gate; Heavenly Footman by Graham Midgley. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of The Miscellaneous Works of John Bunyan: The Poems by Graham Midgley. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This delightful social history of academic life in eighteenth-century Oxford presents a meticulous yet entertaining account of the activities of students and dons at the university: the often inordinate eating and drinking; life in the senior common rooms; the struggles with authority; the place of women in an all-male environment; the pleasures of sauntering in a still-rural Oxford; the sports and pastimes which kept students from their books; music, theatre and the astounding variety of entertainment found in the streets: executions, political riots and circuses that the gown as well as the town attended and relished. Graham Midgley draws on and quotes from a rich variety of contemporary sources - newspapers, diaries, journals and memoirs, satirical pamphlets, poems, manuscripts, reports from foreign visitors, betting books and even recipe books. He reveals the pleasures and sadnesses, the sobriety and excess, the exuberance and idleness of college and university life. Humorous, wise, crowded with anecdote and abundantly illustrated, the book is a genial guide to a great university in a colourful era.'The whole thing is a feast and hugely enjoyable', David Fairer, University of Leeds Graham Midgley was both student and don at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and became fellow emeritus of the college.