The International John Bunyan Society is pleased to announce that the 2023 Roger F. Pooley Early Career Essay Prize has been award to Richard Angelo Bergen for the essay “The Word and the World: Allegory and the Spatial ‘Nature’ of The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Richard’s winning entry was published in the 2022 issue of Bunyan Studies. The winner’s certificate and cash prize of £300 has been sent to Richard by Professor Shannon Murray, IJBS President. The selection committee was chaired by Bob Owens, and its members were Rachel Adcock, David Gay, and Arlette Zinck.

Richard is the current editor of The Recorder, the official newsletter of the IJBS. He recently completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia, and he works as an English instructor at Corpus Christi College in Vancouver, BC. He has won two Graduate awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. His dissertation discussed the use of space and place in allegorical narratives, and his Bunyan Studies essay is part of a broader project on topography in the allegorical tradition, which Richard aims to fashion into a book. He is also at work on two other essays that pertain to Bunyan: an essay on Bunyan’s representation of mnemonics and his relationship to the Memory Arts tradition as well as a project on the “genre” of allegory, unpacking what it means when modern readers imagine The Pilgrim’s Progress as the fulcrum of allegory.

The annual Roger F. Pooley Early Career Essay Prize is open to all international PhD students and to post-doctoral researchers within the first two years after their viva. Applicants must be members of the IJBS. The prize is for outstanding scholarly work in the field of early modern religion and Dissent, including its literature, history, and reception.