Which allegorical work by John Bunyan inspired the title of C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress?

John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress inspired the title of C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress.

Published in 1933, Lewis’s book is an allegorical journey through a landscape shaped by philosophical and religious ideas. Its title deliberately recalls Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, the celebrated Christian allegory first published in two parts in 1678 and 1684.

Lewis’s protagonist, John, travels in search of an island and encounters figures and places representing competing beliefs, desires, and intellectual positions. The subtitle, An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism, identifies the work’s argumentative purpose.

The two books are not the same story and do not use identical characters. Lewis’s work is a modern literary and theological response to Bunyan’s model, while also reflecting Lewis’s own movement from atheism toward Christianity. The connection is therefore literary and structural rather than a claim that Lewis rewrote Bunyan’s plot.