In Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and The Pilgrim's Progress, part 1 and part 2 (1678, 1684), John Bunyan tries to show his readers how to enter a world founded on the language and story of the Bible. Believers walk the path of righteousness by learning to read. They attain salvation by learning to tell their stories.

The seventeenth century was a time of religious upheaval and social and intellectual transition throughout Europe. Because of these political and ideological upsets, the seventeenth century also witnessed profound tensions in terms of language use and language theory. Medieval writers in the Augustinian tradition believed that there is an inherent, God-given correspondence between words and the things they describe, but new attitudes toward language and the process of signification emerged during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The central debates during the religious turmoil of the seventeenth century centered on questions concerning the status of biblical language, the authority of rival interpretations of the Bible, and the relationship between sign and meaning. Changing attitudes toward language resulted in changing attitudes toward reading and writing.