ANCIENT YET NEW: WILLIAM BLAKE’S MILTON A POEM AND THE POLITICS OF ANTIQUARIANISM _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________ by THOMAS FONTANA Dr. Noah Heringman, Thesis Supervisor MAY 2011 © Copyright by Thomas Fontana 2011 All Rights Reserved The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled ANCIENT YET NEW: WILLIAM BLAKE’S MILTON A POEM AND THE POLITICS OF ANTIQUARIANISM presented by Thomas Fontana, a candidate for the degree of master of arts in English, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Noah Heringman Professor Anne Myers Professor Stefani Engelstein For Laura Poi le vidi in un carro trïumfale, Laurëa mia con suoi santi atti schifi sedersi in parte, et cantar dolcemente. — Petrarch, Canzionere, CCXXV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the continuous support I’ve received from the faculty and graduate students of the English Department at the University of Missouri. In particular, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Noah Heringman, with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working for three out of my four semesters at the university. Without his always enlightening and encouraging feedback, this project could not have been a success. I would also like to thank Dr. Anne Myers and Dr. Stefani Engelstein for their thoughtful and thought-provoking responses to my project. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Introduction: Contemplation of the Present, Past, and Future ........................................................1 1. “Satan’s Druid Sons” as a Critique of Natural and State Religion ...........................8 2. “Verdant Cathedrals of Antiquity”: Stukeley’s Druids and Public Religion ..........34 3. “Poems of the Highest Antiquity”: Ancient Truths and a New Age……………...59 Conclusion: “The Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations” .....................................................84 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................90 iii ANCIENT YET NEW: WILLIAM BLAKE’S MILTON A POEM AND THE POLITICS OF ANTIQUARIANISM Thomas Fontana Dr. Noah Heringman, Thesis Supervisor ABSTRACT This study explores William Blake’s engagement with eighteenth-century antiquarian discourse as a means of critiquing the political and religious institutions of his era. In his shorter epic, Milton a Poem, Blake suggests a model for national regeneration rooted in a view of British antiquity that is marked by an original liberty based on brotherhood and forgiveness. The first chapter demonstrates that Blake presents the Druids as Satanic missionaries spreading his message of submission to his moral law, which also disguises itself as natural law. Blake depicts Satan and the Druids in this manner in order to critique eighteenth-century notions of natural and state religion. The second chapter examines Blake’s particular engagement with the work of the antiquary William Stukeley. Stukeley’s dual role as antiquary and Anglican clergyman reveals that antiquarianism was an important force in the contemporary political landscape. His vision of the Druids as proto-Anglicans and national religionists provides Blake with an avenue for the critique of natural and state religion he presents in Milton. The third chapter demonstrates how Blake uses the poetic and prophetic figure of the bard in opposition to the priestly Druids in order to provide an alternative locus for concerns of national identity and a model for social change through poetry. Communicative acts between individuals inspire the broader spread of the call to self-annihilation and the combination of individuals in brotherhood and forgiveness to join the body of Jesus. iv Introduction The Contemplation of Past, Present, and Future Scholars have continually noted the presence of characters and images drawn from British antiquity in William Blake’s Milton a Poem. It may strike one as odd that a poem concerned with the primacy of the imagination over the memory and of the mental over the corporeal would reveal an interest in the study of antiquity, which is fundamentally invested in the recovery of cultural memory through material objects. As archaeological theorist and historian Alain Schnapp reminds us: Memory needs the earth in order to survive. Whether inscribed in stone, brick, or parchment, or flowing in the human memory by the agency of bard or poet, a foundation narrative must root itself in the land, invest itself with that reality which is sealed within the soil. It matters little if that seal is never broken, as long as there is some corner of the land which bears witness to its existence. (Schnapp 24) The four quatrains that appear in the Milton Preface take the form of persistent questioning, a desire to know whether Christ once walked in England “in ancient time” (2:27)1. The speaker looks throughout “Englands green & pleasant land” for an answer, turning his attention variously to England’s “mountains green,” “pleasant pastures,” and “clouded hills” (2:28, 30, 32, 42). The speaker’s search for the site of the former Jerusalem gives way to his resolve to build Jerusalem anew. The monument in question has remained the same, yet the speaker has shifted his role from that of discoverer to that of creator. As Schnapp explains, “We have to engage with the idea that other human beings, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few hours’ time, maybe a few years or centuries 1 Unless otherwise noted, I refer throughout to the Princeton University Press edition of Milton, which uses copy C as its source text. Plate 2, which bears the Preface, appears only in copies A and B. It was initially part of copy C, but Blake later removed it. Essick and Viscomi include the plate from copy B as a supplementary illustration. 1 from now, will look upon our traces. Understood in this way, the archaeological consciousness is born more of confrontation with the future than with the past” (18). In Milton, Blake’s engagement with antiquity bears at all times a concern with past, present, and future. Jon Mee has described William Blake in terms of Claude Levi-Strauss’ notion of the “bricoleur,” due to his inclination to build brilliantly reorganized structures from a repertoire of disparate discourses. Given this comparison, it is no surprise that Blake engages with antiquarianism, a discipline defined by its interdisciplinarity, such that it was “part of an intellectual world in which modern disciplines such as geology, archaeology, anthropology and comparative religion were pursued interchangeably, with little sense of disciplinary boundaries” (Sweet 119). Antiquarianism can most readily be understood as the precursor to the modern discipline of archaeology, albeit much less empirically rigorous. Though sometimes derided by modern scholars as eccentric or amateurish, antiquaries played an integral role in the cultural and intellectual climate of eighteenth-century Britain. In particular, antiquarian investigations into the early inhabitants of the British Isles had a significant impact on the burgeoning concept of national identity that increasingly solidified over the course of the century. Rosemary Sweet argues: Antiquaries were also convinced of the importance of their studies to their contemporary world, not least because of the patriotic importance of establishing the earliest history of national origins. For the historian of eighteenth-century Britain these attempts to trace back the lineage of the nation illuminate the process by which national histories and a national identity were constructed and highlight the differences between the self- perceptions of the constituent parts of the kingdom. (Sweet 119) 2 By populating his poetic landscape with Druids and bards, Blake also explores this issue of national identity and the possibility of national transformation. This study will examine ways in which antiquarian discourse was used in the eighteenth century to help define the emergent British national identity. After touching on this more general concern, I will examine in greater detail the cases of Blake and the antiquary William Stukeley. Though Stukeley is no stranger to Blake criticism, I will examine the relationship between the two men’s work in more detail than is typically the case with either Blake scholars or those who study Stukeley or eighteenth-century antiquaries. Stukeley constructed an image of antiquity to bolster the power structures of the present. Blake’s work, in turn, constitutes a reaction against this use of antiquity. Blake turns the antiquarian discourse represented by Stukeley on its head and targets the Druids as part of an attack on those very institutions that men like Stukeley sought to defend. To complete the reversal, Blake turns to another figure from British antiquity, the bard, to show how poetry constitutes a prophetic call for individual change that spreads into broader social change. An epic poet typically takes up as his subject matter ancient characters and events