Narrative, Ritual, and Irony in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress"

[...] each of the first five major sections begins with the same phrase by the narrator ("Now I saw in my dream") and ends with the hero singing a brief song in verse (see fig, 1). [...] perhaps the most dangerous use of this "dark figure" for a Puritan would be to substitute it with submission to divine judgment on one's own life pilgrimage.