DOCSLIB.ORG

1. Robert Southey, Cited in S. Foster Damon, William Blake, His Philosophy and Symbols (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958) P

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
1. Robert Southey, Cited in S. Foster Damon, William Blake, His Philosophy and Symbols (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958) P Notes NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION 1. Robert Southey, cited in S. Foster Damon, William Blake, His Philosophy and Symbols (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1958) p. 246. 2. David V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet against Empire (New York: Anchor Books, 1969) p. 3. See also Jacob Bronowski, William Blake: A Man without a Mask (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1944), and Bernard Blackstone, English Blake (London: Cambridge University Press, 1949; Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966). 3. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton University Press, 1969) p. 424. Frye is by far the most brilliant, though not the most recent, practitioner of this kind of criticism. 4. Thus, for example, the illustrations for Vala can be related to alchemical symbols but not to Blake's psyche. See Piloo Nannavutty, 'Materia Prima in a Page of Blake's Vala', in William Blake: Essays for S. Foster Damon, ed. Alvin H. Rosenfeld (Providence: Brown University Press, 1969). William Blake's 'Vala', ed. H. M. Margoliouth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), sees the sexual drawing as illustrating 'Urizen's idea of what Ahania really is, i.e., sin' (p. 144). John E. Grant, who has clarified the visual details of the perverse or orgiastic 'erotic fantasy' Blake portrays, comes to the disappointingly tame conclusion that 'Blake ... seems to have observed more clearly than most libertarians in the 18th Century how the pursuit of natural happiness tends to lead insensibly toward a quest for the unnatural' - 'Visions in Vala', in Blake's Sublime Allegory, ed. Stuart Curran and Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973) p. 184. 5. These exceptions do suggest, however, that at least some readers are becoming aware of the necessity of attending to the emotional content of Blake's poems and his sexual obsessions. Mary Lynn Johnson and Brian Wilkie (,On Reading The Four Zoas: Inscape and Analogy', in Blake's Sublime Allegory, ed. Curran and Wittreich, p. 203) suggest that the artistic coherence of The Four Zoas depends on 'patterns in the psyche'. Jean H. Hagstrum takes another look at the perverse sexuality of Babylon in 'Babylon Revisited', ibid., p. 101. Finally, John Sutherland, in 'Blake: a Crisis of Love and Jealousy', PMLA, Jan-Mar 1972, p. 425, suggests that 'the extent of Blake's preoccupation with sexual love may need critical attention'. 6. Since the completion of my book there has been a new and welcome concern with psychological issues. Christine Gallant, Blake and the Assimilation of 298 Notes 299 Chaos (Princeton University Press, 1978), has joined W. P. Witcutt, Blake: A PsycholoRical Study (London: Hollis & Carter, 1946), and June Singer, 'The Unholy Bible': A Psychological Interpretation of William Blake (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1970), as a thoughful example of Jungian criticism. Gallant is perhaps too optimistic about Blake's uitimate success In mastering his inner chaos, but she does illuminate some of his defences, particularly his relationship to Urizen's controlling rationality. Now, in addition to the two Freudian articles by Randel Helms - 'Ore: the Id in Blake and Tolkien', Literature and Psycholo­ gy, 20 (1969) pp. 31-5, and 'Blake at Felpham: a Study in the Psychology of Vision', ibid., 22 (1971) pp. 57-66 - there are articles like Morris Dickstein's 'Blake's Reading of Freud' in The Literary Freud: Mechanisms of Defence and the Poetic Will (New Haven, Conn., and New York: Yale University Press, 1980). There is also Diana Hume George's Blake and Freud (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), which sees Blake both as anticipating major Freudian concepts and as improving on Freud by adding a dimension of liberty. While Gallant's analysis of individual early lyrics is excellent, I think she under­ estimates the degree to which Blake's ideas of liberty were dictated by his sexual fantasies - and so the opposite of free. Similarly, her rationalisation of Blake's hostility towards women distorts her reading of the prophecies. 7. Anne K. Mellor, Blake's Human Form Divine (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1974) p. 336. 8. James Rieger, 'The Hem of their Garments: the Bard's Song in Milton', in Blake's Sublime Allegory, ed. Curran and Wittreich, p. 260. 9. As Frye observes: 'Hence, while no one could be less of an ascetic than Blake, the premise from which the ascetic starts is also his. The body is "vile": it is the body of a peeled ape, a witch's cauldron of tangled tissues and sodden excrement cooking in blood' (Fearful Symmetry, p. 194). 10. Roger R. Easson, 'Blake and His Readers in Jerusalem', in Blake's Sublime Allegory, ed. Curran and Wittreich, p. 312. 11. Stuart Curran, 'The Structures of Jerusalem', ibid., p. 339. 12. When John Sutherland ('Blake and Urizen', in Blake's Visionary Forms Dramatic, ed. David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (Princeton University Press, 1970) pp. 244-62) suggested ways in which the late Blake took on Urizen's defences, his restrained attempt was greeted with typical misunderstanding and horror at 'the astonishing conclusion that in opting for "the great and golden rule of art" ... Blake "could argue freely (in effect) for Satan and for Urizen"!' - Morton Paley, Blake Studies, 4 (Fall 1971) p. 98. 13. S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbols of William Blake (New York: Dutton, 1971) p. 309. 14. Damon, William Blake, p. 98. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., p. 99. 17. Damon, A Blake Dictionary, p. 196. Damon's reference to Shelley also suggests that Blake was participating in a common 'Romantic' justification of incest. But, however common incestuous themes were among other poets, for Blake with his intensely private vision these themes would seem to come primarily from his inner life. Even if they were available in the culture, the force of their meaning and their effect for Blake would have to depend on his personal views and needs and not merely on the attractions of a literary convention. 18. Norman O. Brown, Love's Body (New York: Vintage Books, 1966) p. 151. 19. Norman O. Brown, Life against Death (New York: Vintage Books, 1959) p.176. 300 Notes 20. I am indebted to Frederick Crews for this observation. See his Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Critical Method (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975) p. 33. 21. Ibid., p. 55. 22. Ibid., p. 33. 23. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) p. 29. 24. Ibid., p. 11. NOTES TO CHAPTER 1: 'AN ISLAND IN THE MOON' 1. Mark Schorer, William Blake: The Politics of Vision (New York: Vintage Books, 1959) p. 140. Northrop Frye, like Schorer and Damon, is shocked to 'stumble upon three of the most delicate and fragile of the Songs of Innocence' in the midst of 'a Gargantuan nightmare' (Fearful Symmetry, p. 182). 2. Damon, William Blake, p. 3. 3. Erdman, Blake, pp. 126-7. This idea, as we shall see, is partially true; but Erdman does not give enough attention to the Songs' surface innocence or the reasons for their striking difference in tone and style from the earlier satire. 4. Hubert J. Norman, cited in Damon, William Blake, p. 34. 5. Erdman, Blake, p. 101. 6. St Augustine, Confessions, trans. William Watts (London: William Heinemann, 1812). 7. Text-references to Island give the chapter followed by page numbers in Erdman. 8. Erdman, Blake, p. 102n. 9. Crabb Robinson, quoted in M. H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971) p. 25. 10. The yellow vest is a comic foreshadowing of the spectre Tharmas's golden serpent-scales in Vala, and corruption'S rape of flesh is echoed in Tharmas's rape of the earth-mother Enion. 11. The figure of Suction-Robert here may be a conflation of two siblings, Robert and another brother, christened Richard. Bentley and others believe Richard died in infancy when Blake was five. Gilchrist, on the other hand, assumed him to be Robert, recorded erroneously. Whether Robert or Richard was closest to Blake in age is in a sense irrelevant to any images of rivalry he presented. The intensity of such feelings in relation to actual siblings might be questioned by readers who imagine that by the age of five a child's anger and envy of a nursing infant is bound to be diminishing. But this depends entirely on the individual case. We do know Blake's extreme sensitivity about other childhood issues, such as discipline. Therefore, even if Blake was ten years older, Robert's birth, following that of the other sibling, could certainly have revived feelings of exclusion and jealousy. Psychodynamically, such feelings can be evoked throughout life by situations like the original one. 12. Blake's Visionary Forms, ed. Erdman and Grant, p. 27n. 13. Erdman, Blake, p. 90. 14. Ibid., p. 99. 15. For documentation of the relation between Blake and Flaxman, see G. E. Bentley, Jr, 'Blake's Engravings and his Friendship with Flaxman', Studies in Bibliography, 12 (1959). 16. The Letters of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968) p. 39. Notes 301 17. As is often the case with Blake's humour in Island, the sequence concerning Steelyard and the maiden forecasts a similar situation in a later poem. In Vala, Man falls when he walks 'Among the flowers of Beulah ... and [sees] Vala the lily .... There he reveld in sweet delight among the Flowers' (Blake's 'Vala', ed. Margoliouth, p. 43). 18. Erdman, Blake, p. 104. 19. Ibid., pp. 120-2. 20. Martha W. England, 'Apprenticeship at the Haymarket', in Blake's Visionary Forms, ed.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Issues) and Begin with the Summer Issue
    VOLUME 22 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1988/89 ■iiB ii ••▼•• w BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY WINTER 1988/89 REVIEWS 103 William Blake, An Island in the Moon: A Facsimile of the Manuscript Introduced, Transcribed, and Annotated by Michael Phillips, reviewed by G. E. Bentley, Jr. 105 David Bindman, ed., William Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job, and Colour Versions of William- Blake 's Book of job Designs from the Circle of John Linnell, reviewed by Martin Butlin AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY VOLUME 22 NUMBER 3 WINTER 1988/89 DISCUSSION 110 An Island in the Moon CONTENTS Michael Phillips 80 Canterbury Revisited: The Blake-Cromek Controversy by Aileen Ward CONTRIBUTORS 93 The Shifting Characterization of Tharmas and Enion in Pages 3-7 of Blake's Vala or The FourZoas G. E. BENTLEY, JR., University of Toronto, will be at by John B. Pierce the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India, through November 1988, and at the National Li• brary of Australia, Canberra, from January-April 1989. Blake Books Supplement is forthcoming. MARTIN BUTLIN is Keeper of the Historic British Col• lection at the Tate Gallery in London and author of The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (Yale, 1981). MICHAEL PHILLIPS teaches English literature at Edinburgh University. A monograph on the creation in J rrfHRurtfr** fW^F *rWr i*# manuscript and "Illuminated Printing" of the Songs of Innocence and Songs ofExperience is to be published in 1989 by the College de France. JOHN B. PIERCE, Assistant Professor in English at the University of Toronto, is currently at work on the manu• script of The Four Zoas.
    [Show full text]
  • Blake's Re-Vision of Sentimentalism in the Four Zoas
    ARTICLE “Tenderness & Love Not Uninspird”: Blake’s Re- Vision of Sentimentalism in The Four Zoas Justin Van Kleeck Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 39, Issue 2, Fall 2005, pp. 60-77 ARTICLES tion. Their attack often took a gendered form, for critics saw sentimentalism as a dividing force between the sexes that also created weak victims or crafty tyrants within the sexes. Blake points out these negative characteristics of sentimen­ "Tenderness & Love Not Uninspird": talism in mythological terms with his vision of the fragmen­ tation and fall of the Universal Man Albion into male and fe­ Blake's Re­Vision of Sentimentalism male parts, Zoas and Emanations. In the chaotic universe that in The Four Zoas results, sentimentalism is part of a "system" that perpetuates suffering in the fallen world, further dividing the sexes into their stereotypical roles. Although "feminine" sentimentality BY JUSTIN VAN KLEECK serves as a force for reunion and harmony, its connection with fallen nature and "vegetated" life in Blake's mythology turns it into a trap, at best a Band­Aid on the mortal wound of the fall. For Mercy has a human heart Pity would be no more, For Blake, mutual sympathy in the fallen world requires the Pity, a human face If we did not make somebody Poor: additional strength and guidance of inspired vision (initiating And Love, the human form divine, And Mercy no more could be, And Peace, the human dress. If all were as happy as we; a fiery Last Judgment) in order to become truly redemptive, William Blake, "The Divine Image" Blake, "The Human Abstract" effective rather than merely affective.
    [Show full text]
  • Protective Pastoral: Innocence and Female Experience in William Blake's Songs and Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market June Sturrock
    Colby Quarterly Volume 30 Article 4 Issue 2 June June 1994 Protective Pastoral: Innocence and Female Experience in William Blake's Songs and Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market June Sturrock Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Quarterly, Volume 30, no.2, June 1994, p.98-108 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Colby. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sturrock: Protective Pastoral: Innocence and Female Experience in William B Protective Pastoral: Innocence and Female Experience in William Blake's Songs and Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market by JlTNE STURROCK IIyEA, THOUGH I walk through the valley ofthe shadow ofdeath, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staffthey comfort me." The twenty-third psalm has been offered as comfort to the sick and the grieving for thousands ofyears now, with its image ofGod as the good shepherd and the soul beloved ofGod as the protected sheep. This psalm, and such equally well-known passages as Isaiah's "He shall feed his flock as a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs in his arms" (40. 11), together with the specifically Christian version: "I am the good shepherd" (John 10. 11, 14), have obviously affected the whole pastoral tradition in European literature. Among othereffects the conceptofGod as shepherd has allowed for development of the protective implications of classical pastoral. The pastoral idyll-as opposed to the pastoral elegy­ suggests a safe, rural world in that corruption, confusion and danger are placed elsewhere-in the city.
    [Show full text]
  • The Visionary Company
    WILLIAM BLAKE 49 rible world offering no compensations for such denial, The] can bear reality no longer and with a shriek flees back "unhinder' d" into her paradise. It will turn in time into a dungeon of Ulro for her, by the law of Blake's dialectic, for "where man is not, nature is barren"and The] has refused to become man. The pleasures of reading The Book of Thel, once the poem is understood, are very nearly unique among the pleasures of litera­ ture. Though the poem ends in voluntary negation, its tone until the vehement last section is a technical triumph over the problem of depicting a Beulah world in which all contraries are equally true. Thel's world is precariously beautiful; one false phrase and its looking-glass reality would be shattered, yet Blake's diction re­ mains firm even as he sets forth a vision of fragility. Had Thel been able to maintain herself in Experience, she might have re­ covered Innocence within it. The poem's last plate shows a serpent guided by three children who ride upon him, as a final emblem of sexual Generation tamed by the Innocent vision. The mood of the poem culminates in regret, which the poem's earlier tone prophe­ sied. VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION The heroine of Visions of the Daughters of Albion ( 1793), Oothoon, is the redemption of the timid virgin Thel. Thel's final griefwas only pathetic, and her failure of will a doom to vegetative self-absorption. Oothoon's fate has the dignity of the tragic.
    [Show full text]
  • Another Source for Blake's Orc
    MINUTE PARTICULAR Another Source for Blake’s trc Randel Helms Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 15, Issue 4, Spring 1982, pp. 198-199 198 By omitting all reference to Blake's life and writings, Ballard has written a tour de force that in some ways gets closer to the heart of Blake's MINUTE vision than the more explicitly Blakean novels. [My thanks to Roberto Cuooi and Barbara Heppner for PARTICULARS drawing my attention to the last too novels.] BLAKE AND THE NOVELISTS ANOTHER SOURCE FOR BLAKE'S ORC Christopher Heppner Randel Helms recurring fascination in the reading of illiam Blake derived the name and character- Blake is to wonder how some of his statements istics of his figure Ore from a variety of A and exhortations would feel if lived out in Wsources, combining them to produce the a real life—one's own, for example. Many of the various aspects of the character in such poems as novelists who have used Blake have explored this America, The Four Zoas and The Song of Los. The question, from a variety of perspectives. Joyce hellish aspects of Ore probably come from the Latin Cary in The Horse's Mouth gave us one version of the Orcus, the abode of the dead in Roman mythology and artist as hero, living out his own interpretation of an alternate name for Dis, the god of the underworld. Blake. Colin Wilson's The Glass Cage made its hero In Tiriel, Ijim describes Uriel's house, after his a Blake critic, but an oddly reclusive one, who sons have expelled him, as "dark as vacant Orcus."1 appears a little ambivalent in his lived responses The libidinous aspect of Ore may well come, as David to the poet, and is now writing about Whitehead.
    [Show full text]
  • Postgraduate English: Issue 15
    Farrell Postgraduate English: Issue 15 Postgraduate English www.dur.ac.uk/postgraduate.english ISSN 1756-9761 Issue 15 March 2007 Editors: Ollie Taylor and Kostas Boyiopoulos Revolution & Revelation: William Blake and the Moral Law Michael Farrell* * University of Oxford ISSN 1756-9761 1 Farrell Postgraduate English: Issue 15 Revolution & Revelation: William Blake and the Moral Law Michael Farrell University of Oxford Postgraduate English, Issue 15, March 2007 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, despite its parodic form and function, is Blake’s personal and politico-theological manifesto outlining his fervent opposition to institutionalised religion and the oppressive moral laws it prescribes. It ultimately concerns the opposition between the Spirit of Prophecy and religious Law. For Blake, true Christianity resides in the cultivation of human energies and in the fulfilment of human potential and desire – the cultivation for which the prophets of the past are archetypal representatives – yet the energies of which the Mosaic Decalogue inhibits. Blake believes that all religion has its provenance in the Poetic Genius which “is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation” (Erdman 1) to the fulfilment of human potential. Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” demonstrate how the energies underlying the true religious and potentially revolutionary consciousness are to be cultivated. He is especially concerned with repressed sexual energies of bodily sensation, stating in The Marriage that “the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy … This will come to pass by an improvement of sexual enjoyment” (39). He subsequently exposes the relativity of moral codes and hence “the vanity of angels” who “speak of themselves as the only wise” (42) – that is, the fallacy of institutionalised Christianity and its repressive moral law or “sacred codes” which are established upon “systematic reasoning”.
    [Show full text]
  • Blake's Critique of Enlightenment Reason in the Four Zoas
    Colby Quarterly Volume 19 Issue 4 December Article 3 December 1983 Blake's Critique of Enlightenment Reason in The Four Zoas Michael Ackland Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Library Quarterly, Volume 19, no.4, December 1983, p.173-189 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. Ackland: Blake's Critique of Enlightenment Reason in The Four Zoas Blake's Critique of Enlightenment Reason in The Four Zoas by MICHAEL ACKLAND RIZEN is at once one of Blake's most easily recognizable characters U and one of his most elusive. Pictured often as a grey, stern, hover­ ing eminence, his wide-outspread arms suggest oppression, stultifica­ tion, and limitation. He is the cruel, jealous patriarch of this world, the Nobodaddy-boogey man-god evoked to quieten the child, to still the rabble, to repress the questing intellect. At other times in Blake's evolv­ ing mythology he is an inferior demiurge, responsible for this botched and fallen creation. In political terms, he can project the repressive, warmongering spirit of Pitt's England, or the collective forces of social tyranny. More fundamentally, he is a personal attribute: nobody's daddy because everyone creates him. As one possible derivation of his name suggests, he is "your horizon," or those impulses in each of us which, through their falsely assumed authority, limit all man's other capabilities. Yet Urizen can, at times, earn our grudging admiration.
    [Show full text]
  • William Blake (1757-1827)
    William Blake (1757-1827) Poet, Painter, & Printer A radical thinker (called insane by some) with a strong interest in religion, albeit not orthodox religion. • Published together in 1794. • The Songs of Experience are darker, and often echo the Songs of Innocence in contrast. For example, Songs of Innocence contains “The Lamb” & Songs of Experience includes “The Tyger.” • The work reflects the period’s interest in childhood, nostalgia, and transformation (going from one state of being to another). It also shows some attention to those suffering in the midst of the industrial revolution. THE TYGER Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare sieze the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger,Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? A few thoughts Blake’s Tyger brings to mind: • People view things from their own perspective. • What people say (and how they say it) often says more about themselves than what they mean to say.
    [Show full text]
  • The Symbol of Christ in the Poetry of William Blake
    The symbol of Christ in the poetry of William Blake Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Nemanic, Gerald, 1941- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 18:11:13 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/317898 THE SYMBOL OF CHRIST IN THE POETRY OF WILLIAM BLAKE Gerald Carl Neman!e A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the 3 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1965 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the. Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. APPROVAL. BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below: TABLE OF COITENTS INTRODUCTION.
    [Show full text]
  • The Poetry of Rita Dove
    University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Winter 1999 Language's "bliss of unfolding" in and through history, autobiography and myth: The poetry of Rita Dove Carol Keyes University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Keyes, Carol, "Language's "bliss of unfolding" in and through history, autobiography and myth: The poetry of Rita Dove" (1999). Doctoral Dissertations. 2107. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2107 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMi films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps.
    [Show full text]
  • Artist and Spectre: Divine Vision in the Earthly Work of William Blake
    Artist and Spectre: Divine Vision in the Earthly Work of William Blake Robert Searway My first encounter with William Blake, best reading teachers available, a radical though perhaps not as magnificent as a fiery challenge to the reasoning mind, a training star descending to my foot (as Blake depicted ground for knowledge in as many areas as both his brother Robert’s and his own you are willing to open for yourself” (14). encounter with the poet Milton above), came Blake did, however, hope for understanding during my freshman year in college when my within his own lifetime. In an advertisement professor admitted he had not studied Blake for his last artistic exhibition, Blake implores extensively and did not fully understand him. the public: “those who have been told that my From that moment I was intrigued, and have Works are but an unscientific and irregular come to find that not understanding Blake has Eccentricity, a Madman’s Scrawls, I demand been and remains a common theme even of them to do me the justice to examine among English literature studies. Though he before they decide” (Complete Poetry 527- was considered mad and neglected artistically 528). Blake hoped to cultivate a new for much of his life, modern scholars have understanding of the human potential in begun to change his fortunes. Blake still has Imagination. He hoped to change perceptions something, even if only a fleeting confusing of reality, and believed in the power of art to vision, to offer in his art and idea of art. cultivate the minds of his audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Binary Domination and Bondage: Blake's Representations of Race
    Binary Domination and Bondage: Blake’s Representations of Race, Nationalism, and Gender Katherine Calvin Submitted to the Department of English, Vanderbilt University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in the Major, April 17, 2013 Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………..………………………1 I. Blake’s Theory and Technique…………………….…………………………………..3 II. Revealing (and Contesting) the Racial Binary in Blake’s “The Little Black Boy”.......14 III. Colonization, Revolution, and the Consequences in America, A Prophecy …...……..33 IV. Gender and Rhetoric in Visions of the Daughters of Albion …………………..…..…63 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….90 Selected Bibliography……………………………………………………...………….93 Introduction “Thy soft American plains are mine and mine thy north and south/ Stampt with my signet are the swarthy children of the sun.”1 In William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion, the rapist Bromion decries his victim Oothoon on the basis of three conflated identities: race, colonial status, and gender. With his seed already sown in her womb, he pledges that her “swarthy” offspring will bear not only his genetic signet but also labor in subservience to him, the colonial master. Bromion himself encompasses everything Oothoon is not—he is a white male in the act of colonization while she is a female lashed to the identity of America, which is ethnically and politically subservient. Written in an age of burgeoning political and social radicalism, Visions nonetheless fails to conclude with the triumphant victory of Oothoon,
    [Show full text]