DOCSLIB.ORG

Language and the Imagination in the Communal World of William Blake by Robyn Pierce

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Language and the Imagination in the Communal World of William Blake by Robyn Pierce Consciousness Embodied: Language and the Imagination in the Communal World of William Blake By Robyn Pierce A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg 2014 Supervised by: Prof. Merle Williams and Prof. Eugenie Freed-Isserow 1 Declaration I declare that this dissertation Consciousness Embodied: Language and the Imagination in the Communal World of William Blake is my own unaided work. It is submitted for the degree of Master of Arts in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any other degree or examination in any other university. _________________________ Robyn Pierce ______of____________________2014 2 Abstract This dissertation examines the philosophical and spiritual beliefs that underpin William Blake’s account of the imagination, his objections to empiricism and his understanding of poetic language. It begins by considering these beliefs in relation to the idealist principles of George Berkeley as a means of illustrating Blake’s own objections to the empiricism of John Locke. The philosophies of Locke and Berkeley were popular in Blake’s society and their philosophical positions were well known to him. Blake and Berkeley are aligned against Locke’s belief in an objective world composed of matter, and his theory of abstract ideas. Both reject Locke’s principles by affirming the primacy of the perceiving subject. However, Blake disagrees with Berkeley’s theologically traditional understanding of God. He views perception as an act of artistic creation and believes that spiritual divinity is contained within and is intrinsic to man’s human form. This account of human perception as the creative act of an immanent divinity is further elucidated through a comparison with the twentieth-century existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau- Ponty. In the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty examines human experience as the functioning of an embodied consciousness in a shared life-world. While Merleau-Ponty does not make any reference to a spiritual deity, his understanding of experience offers a link between Berkeley’s criticisms of Locke and Blake’s own objections to empiricism. Through a comparative examination of Blake and Merleau-Ponty, the imagination is revealed to be the creative or formative consciousness that proceeds from the integrated mind-body complex of the “Divine Body” or “human form divine”. This embodied existence locates the perceiving self in a dynamic physical landscape that is shared with other embodied consciousnesses. It is this communal or intersubjective interaction between self and other that constitutes the experienced world. Merleau-Ponty’s account of the chiasm and his notion of flesh, discussed in The Visible and the Invisible, are applied to Blake in order to elucidate his belief in poetic vision and the constitutive power of language. The form and function of language are compared with that of the body, because both bring the individual experience of a perceiving subject into being in the world and facilitate the reciprocal exchange between the self and other. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that Blake characterises the body and language as the living media of the imagination, which facilitate a creative exchange between a perceiving self and a shared life-world. 3 Key Words William Blake; imagination; language; community; John Locke; empiricism; George Berkeley; idealism; Maurice Merleau-Ponty; phenomenology; embodied consciousness; intersubjective; chiasm. 4 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors Professor Merle Williams and Professor Eugenie R. Freed-Isserow, for their continuous support, enthusiasm, and guidance. Without their expertise, immense knowledge, dedication and patience this project could not have been completed. I would also like to thank those who attended my proposal seminar, and in particular Professor Anette Horn, for their comments and encouragement. Many thanks go to Carla Douglas for all of her support and assistance, and for our many Blake discussions. Thank you to the University of the Witwatersrand and the Harold and Doris Tothill Scholarship Fund for providing me with the financial assistance to complete this dissertation. It would not have been possible to conduct this study of Blake without the services provided by the William Blake Archive, which is an indispensable resource for current Blake scholars. I am very grateful to the editors of the Archive, Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, who maintain it. I would also like to extend my thanks to Prof. Alan Weinberg and to Prof. Peter Otto for their helpful and encouraging commentary at the examination stage of this dissertation. Lastly, I would like to thank my family and friends for all of their help and encouragement, and my partner Brett Coomer for enduring my fascination with William Blake. 5 A Note on the Text This study examines William Blake’s illuminated poetry as a “composite art” consisting of both image and text.1 Digital facsimiles of Blake’s original plates have been accessed via The William Blake Archive.2 All textual references to Blake’s own works are to The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman, with commentary by Harold Bloom (New York: Random House Inc, 1988). These references provide the plate number, as well as the line number for verse works, together with a page reference to Erdman’s text. All spelling and punctuation has been reproduced as it appears in Erdman’s text, and page references to this text are preceded by the abbreviation “E”. The following abbreviations for in-text references to Blake’s works have been employed: AR All Religions are One Berk Annotations to Berkeley’s Siris BL Book of Los BU First Book of Urizen DC Descriptive Catalogue of Blake’s Exhibition E Europe a Prophecy FZ Vala or the Four Zoas J Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion Lav Annotations to Lavator’s Aphorisms M Milton a Poem MHH The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Rey Annotations to The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds Swe Annotations to Swedenborg’s Divine Love and Divine Wisdom VDA Visions of the Daughters of Albion VLJ Vision of the Last Judgement Word Annotations to Wordsworth’s Poems 1 This term is taken from W.J.T Mitchell’s seminal study entitled Blake’s Composite Art: a Study of the Illuminated Poetry (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978). His study offers “the first extended, systematic attempt to define the nature of Blake's composite art from the inside out, as an expression of his own theories of art rather than as a late example of the long tradition of pictorial and poetic marriages which include the emblem book and the illuminated manuscript" (xv). This study is not concerned with the complex relationship between image and text in Blake’s works, but it does examine both the pictorial and poetic elements of Blake’s art because both elements form an integral part of his poetic vision and philosophy. 2 This digital collection of Blake’s works is maintained by the editors Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, and can be accessed online at the address: http://www.blakearchive.org. 6 In-text references to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical writings are abbreviated as follows: CD Cézanne’s Doubt PoP Phenomenology of Perception PW Prose of the World S Signs SNS Sense and Non-sense VI The Visible and the Invisible Other in-text abbreviations include: BL Biographia Literaria by Samuel Coleridge PL Paradise Lost by John Milton Cover page image is taken from “The Reunion of the Body and the Soul”. Robert Blair, The Grave. 1808. Object 13. Collection of Robert N. Essick. (William Blake Archive) 7 Table of Contents Declaration....................................................................................................................2 Abstract.........................................................................................................................3 Key Words....................................................................................................................4 Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................5 A Note on the Text........................................................................................................6 Introduction.................................................................................................................10 Chapters 1. Blake’s Objections to Locke and Berkeley 19 2. The Imagination as Embodied Spiritual Consciousness and Intersubjective Society 47 3. Parole, Langue, and Language as Flesh 84 Conclusion.................................................................................................................134 Works Cited...............................................................................................................141 8 For my team captains Lesley Pierce, Jeff Pierce and Brett Coomer, who let me be with Blake. 9 Introduction “No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”3 — Samuel Taylor Coleridge “Genius and Inspiration are the Great Origin and Bond of Society.”4 — William Blake Although William Blake was once read as a poet who had produced a largely incomprehensible spiritual mythology, together with some pleasing lyrics and a book of children’s poems, studies such as S. Foster Damon’s Blake Dictionary and Northrop Frye’s Fearful
Load more

Recommended publications
  • William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience: from Innocence to Experience to Wise Innocence Robert W
    Eastern Illinois University The Keep Masters Theses Student Theses & Publications 1977 William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience: From Innocence to Experience to Wise Innocence Robert W. Winkleblack Eastern Illinois University This research is a product of the graduate program in English at Eastern Illinois University. Find out more about the program. Recommended Citation Winkleblack, Robert W., "William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience: From Innocence to Experience to Wise Innocence" (1977). Masters Theses. 3328. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/3328 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Theses & Publications at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PAPER CERTIFICATE #2 TO: Graduate Degree Candidates who have written formal theses. SUBJECT: Permission to reproduce theses. The University Library is receiving a number of requests from other institutions asking permission to reproduce dissertations for inclusion in their library holdings. Although no copyright laws are involved, we feel that professional courtesy demands that permission be obtained from the author before we allow theses to be copied. Please sign one of the following statements: Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University has my permission to lend my thesis to a reputable college or university for the purpose of copying it for inclusion in that institution's library or research holdings. �S"Date J /_'117 Author I respectfully request Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University not allow my thesis be reproduced because ��--��- Date Author pdm WILLIAM BLAKE'S SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE: - FROM INNOCENCE TO EXPERIENCE TO WISE INNOCENCE (TITLE) BY Robert W .
    [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]
  • A Poetic Sense of Evil Xiao-Xuan DU
    2020 2nd International Conference on Arts, Humanity and Economics, Management (AHEM 2020) ISBN: 978-1-60595-685-5 A Poetic Sense of Evil 1,a,* Xiao-xuan DU 1School of Foreign Languages, Dalian Neusoft University of Information, Dalian, Liaoning, China [email protected] *corresponding author Keywords: Evil, Good, Natural state. Abstract. This paper is intended to analyze the theme of William Blake’s poem The Tyger in the perspective of “evil”. The interpretation comprises of three sections, namely a brief introduction to the author—William Blake, analysis of this poem and comparisons with the other two poems written by Blake, reaching to the conclusion that “evil” is a natural state and an inseparable part of social progress. 1. Introduction The Tyger was first published in William Blake’s first volume of Songs of Experience in 1794. The Songs of Experience was written to complement Blake’s earlier collection, Songs of Innocence (1789). The Tyger could be seen as the later volume’s answer to The Lamb, the “innocent” poem in the earlier volume. The Tyger is the best known of all William Blake’s poems and is known as the most cryptic lyrical poem of English literature. The poem’s opening line, ‘Tyger Tyger, burning bright’ is one of the most famous opening lines in English poetry. The poem expresses great astonishment about the creation of a fiery tiger. There is limitless depth in the poem, for with every subsequent reading, it can conjure fresh images in the mind of the receptive readers. There are many interpretations of this poem.
    [Show full text]
  • Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake
    SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE BY WILLIAM BLAKE 1789-1794 Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience By William Blake. This edition was created and published by Global Grey 2014. ©GlobalGrey 2014 Get more free eBooks at: www.globalgrey.co.uk No account needed, no registration, no payment 1 SONGS OF INNOCENCE INTRODUCTION Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child. And he laughing said to me. Pipe a song about a Lamb: So I piped with merry chear, Piper pipe that song again— So I piped, he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy songs of happy chear, 2 So I sung the same again While he wept with joy to hear. Piper sit thee down and write In a book that all may read— So he vanish’d from my sight, And I pluck’d a hollow reed. And I made a rural pen, And I stain’d the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs, Every child may joy to hear 3 THE SHEPHERD How sweet is the Shepherds sweet lot, From the morn to the evening he strays: He shall follow his sheep all the day And his tongue shall be filled with praise. For he hears the lambs innocent call. And he hears the ewes tender reply. He is watchful while they are in peace, For they know when their Shepherd is nigh. 4 THE ECCHOING GREEN The Sun does arise, And make happy the skies. The merry bells ring, To welcome the Spring.
    [Show full text]
  • William Blake ( 1757-1827)
    William Blake ( 1757-1827) "And I made a rural pen, " "0 Earth. 0 Earth, returnl And I stained the water clear, "Arise from out the dewy grass. And J wrote my happy songs "Night is worn. Every child may joy to hear." "And the mom ("Introduction". Songs of Innocence) "Rises from the slumberous mass." ("Introduction''. Songs of Experience! 19 Chapter- 2 WILLIAM BLAKE "And I made a rural pen, And I stain'd the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear. "1 "Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down, And the dews of night arise; Your spring and your day are wasted in play, · And your winter and night in disguise. "1 Recent researches have shown the special importance and significance of childhood in romantic poetry. Blake, being a harbinger of romanticism, had engraved childhood as a state of unalloyed joy in his Songs of Innocence. And among the romantics, be was perhaps the first to have discovered childhood. His inspiration was of course the Bible where he had seen the image of the innocent, its joy and all pure image of little, gentle Jesus. That image ignited the very ·imagination of Blake, the painter and engraver. And with his illuntined mind, he translated that image once more in his poetry, Songs of Innocence. Among the records of an early meeting of the Blake Society on 12th August, 1912 there occurs the following passage : 20 "A pleasing incident of the occasion was the presence of a very pretty robin, which hopped about unconcernedly on the terrace in front of the house and among the members while the papers were being read..
    [Show full text]
  • The Visionary Company : a Reading of English Romantic Poetry Pdf, Epub, Ebook
    THE VISIONARY COMPANY : A READING OF ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETRY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Harold Bloom | 506 pages | 01 Jun 1971 | Cornell University Press | 9780801491177 | English | Ithaca, United States The Visionary Company : A Reading of English Romantic Poetry PDF Book The shadowy ground, the depths beneath, and the heights aloft all in the mind of man, and Milton's heaven is only a veil, separating an allegorical unreality from the human paradise of the are. The rhetorical movement is from the urgency of "The stars consumed like a lamp blown out" to the quiet also the spirit of evil in things heavenly, for. Mitchell, W. Next to this composite state and symbol we have Blake's theory of Beulah's limited but essential role in artistic creativity, and his further theory of the. As Woodhouse says, to Collins "poetry is not primarily concerned vdth nature, but with a bright world of ideal. Now, taking "off. Formative Legacies Bibliography Notes. Harold Bloom Paperback Books. Blake was painter as well as poet and the inventor of a new art form, in which a sequence of engraved plates mixes design and text in varied combinations, so that design and text illuminate one another. Blake's poems do not tell one story only, but they do try to tell as complete a story as can be told. Myth of Memory. Temples of the Sun. In retrospect, Bloom was warming up for his role as the defender of the literary canon. Interested in full access to the magazine? The Romantics were. He means new life and sexual renewal, which appear in the periodic overthrow of literary conventions as well as of restrictive social and reliis.
    [Show full text]
  • Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience
    The Project Gutenberg eBook of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, by William Blake This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience Author: William Blake Release Date: December 25, 2008 [eBook #1934] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND SONGS OF EXPERIENCE*** Transcribed from the 1901 R. Brimley Johnson edition by David Price, email [email protected] SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND SONGS OF EXPERIENCE BY WILLIAM BLAKE LONDON: R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON. GUILDFORD: A. C. CURTIS. MDCCCCI. CONTENTS SONGS OF INNOCENCE Page Introduction 1 The Shepherd 3 The Echoing Green 4 The Lamb 6 The Little Black Boy 7 The Blossom 9 The Chimney-Sweeper 10 The Little Boy Lost 12 The Little Boy Pound 13 Laughing Song 14 A Cradle Song 15 The Divine Image 17 Holy Thursday 19 Night 20 Spring 23 Nurse’s Song 25 Infant Joy 26 A Dream 27 On Another’s Sorrow 29 SONGS OF EXPERIENCE Introduction 33 Earth’s Answer 35 The Clod and the Pebble 37 Holy Thursday 38 The Little Girl Lost 39 The Little Girl Found 42 The Chimney-Sweeper 45 Nurse’s Song 46 The Sick Rose 47 The Fly 48 The Angel 50 The Tiger 51 My Pretty Rose-Tree 53 Ah, Sunflower 54 The Lily 55 The Garden of Love 56 The Little Vagabond 57 London 58 The Human Abstract 59 Infant Sorrow 61 A Poison Tree 62 A Little Boy Lost 63 A Little Girl Lost 65 A Divine Image 67 A Cradle Song 68 The Schoolboy 69 To Tirzah 71 The Voice of the Ancient Bard 72 SONGS OF INNOCENCE INTRODUCTION Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer.
    [Show full text]
  • Complete Poetry and Prose-William Blake
    www.GetPedia.com *More than 150,000 articles in the search database *Learn how almost everything works The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake All Religions are One For the Sexes: The Annotations to: There is No Natural Gates of Paradise Lavater's Aphorisms Religion [a] On Homers Poetry on Man There is No Natural On Virgil Swedenborg's Heaven Religion [b] The Ghost of Abel and Hell The Book of Thel [Laocoön] Swedenborg's Divine Songs of Innocence and Tiriel Love and Divine Wisdom of Experience (Index) The French Revolution Swedenborg's Divine For Children: The Gates The Four Zoas Providence of Paradise Vala Night the First An Apology for the The Marriage of Vala Night the Bible by R. Watson Heaven and Hell [Second] Bacon's Essays Moral, Visions of the Vala Night the Economical and Political Daughters of Albion Third Boyd's Historical America a Prophecy Vala Night the Notes on Dante Europe a Prophecy Fourth The Works of Sir The Song of Los Vala Night the Fifth Joshua Reynolds The [First] Book of Vala Night the Sixth Spurzheim's Urizen Vala Night the Observations on Insanity The Book of Ahania Seventh Berkeley's Siris The Book of Los Vala Night the Wordsworth's Poems Milton: a Poem in 2 Eighth Wordsworth's Preface Books Vala Night the to The Excursion Jerusalem: The Ninth Being The Last Thorton's The Lord's Emanation of The Giant Judgment Prayer, Newly Translated Albion Poetical Sketches Cellini(?) frontispiece [An Island in the Moon] Young's Night To the Public [Songs and Ballads] Thoughts Chap: 1 [plates4-27] (Index) [Inscriptions and Notes On To the Jews [The Pickering or For Pictures] "The fields from Manuscript] (Index) [Miscellaneous Prose] Islington to Marybone [Satiric Verses and [The Letters] (Index) Chap: 2 [plates Epigrams] 28-50] The Everlasting Gospel To the Deists [Blake's Exhibition and "I saw a Monk of Catalogue of 1809] Charlemaine" [Descriptions of the Chap 3 [plates Last Judgment] 53-75] [Blake's Chaucer: To the Christians Prospectuses] "I stood among my [Public Address] valleys of the south" "England! awake! .
    [Show full text]
  • How Gothic Influences and Eidetic Imagery in Eight Color Plates And
    Portland State University PDXScholar Dissertations and Theses Dissertations and Theses 11-19-1992 How Gothic Influences and Eidetic Imagery in Eight Color Plates and Key Poems by William Blake Figuratively Unite Body and Soul by Dramatizing the Visionary Imagination Honor Penelope Vallor Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Vallor, Honor Penelope, "How Gothic Influences and Eidetic Imagery in Eight Color Plates and Key Poems by William Blake Figuratively Unite Body and Soul by Dramatizing the Visionary Imagination" (1992). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4659. https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.6543 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Honor Penelope Vallor for the Master of Arts in English presented November 19, 1992. Title: How Gothic Influences and Eidetic Imagery in Eight Color Plates and Key Poems by William Blake Figuratively Unite Body and Soul by Dramatizing the Visionary Imagination. APPROVED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE THESIS COMMITTEE: Hay P~ Mariels, Chair Carl Markgraf Deeanne Westbrook Anthony ~ Johnc/,/ 'L. Hammond A study of Gothic influences and eidetic imagery evident in eight Blake color plates to demonstrate that, 2 when interpreted together with key Blake poems, unity of body and soul can be accomplished by means of the visionary imagination.
    [Show full text]
  • The Piper and the Physicist
    The Piper and the Physicist When Blake wrote "sweet by Jenijoy La Belle science reigns," he was not envtstomng Caltech. In 1969 I began teaching literature at the that if I could talk in scientific terminology like California Institute of Technology, a university an updated Henn and could somehow work the whose primary purpose is to train scientists and "invisible worm" and "howling storm" of Blake's engineers. When Blake wrote "sweet science "The Sick Rose" into an electrical system, I could reigns," he was not envisioning Caltech. There have the students (anode) eating out of my hand is nothing vety sweet about the institution, <Cathode). although I did hope to bring some playful joy When Donald Ault's Visionary Physics into scientific lives through the Songs of Innocence appeared in 1974, I was delighted. I decided and thereby to extend the students' horizons. I would steal his subtitle and call my course Since the late sixties and early seventies were, in Blake's Response to Newton. Ault's book most schools, a period of great experimentation, would be required reading. The students would I initially tried to go along with the trend and see the volume in the bookstore and immediately create courses on Blake that would appeal to the be atrraaed by the dust jacket of Blake's face (in students' interests. I went around campus put­ psychedelic blue) with his left eye removed from ting up posters of Urizen reaching down with his its socket and replaced by the tiny head of Sir dividers (Caltechers love insttuments) and tried Isaac (in psychedelic orange).
    [Show full text]
  • Issue of the Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
    wamrn^^^^1^ IS f' // £8Ue AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 57 Volume IS Number 1 Summer 1981 DETLEF w. DOERRBECKER is an Associate Lecturer in the history of art at Trier University. Currently he is trying hard to get together a study of Blake's principles of color composition. DAVID v. ERDMAN*s new edition of Blake's poetry £8Ue and prose is scheduled for publication in November. A facsimile of The Four Zoas (with commentary), AH ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 57 co-edited with Cettina Magno, is in press. Volume 15 Number 1 ROBERT N. ESSICK is Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. His catalogue Summer 1981 of Blake's separate plates is forthcoming from Princeton Univ. Press. NELSON HILTON'S "Blake in the Chains of Being" CONTENTS should be appearing in the current issue of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation. New Information on Blake's Illuminated Books by Robert N. Essick, 4 MARTIN K. NURMI teaches at Kent State University. Blake and the Names Divine JUDITH PAGE is an Assistant Professor of English by H. Summerfield, 14 at Millsaps College. A Victorian Blake Facsimile MORTON D. PALEY is co-author, with Robert N. by Morton D. Pa ley, 24 Essick, of Robert Blair's The Grave with the Illustrations of William Blake: a Study with Facsimile (London: Scolar Press, 1981). REVIEWS HENRY SUMMERFIELD teaches English at the University of Victoria, B. C, and is the author of That Romantic Context: Poetry Myriad-minded Man: A Biography of George William Garland Facsimiles Selected and Arranged by Russell "A.E." and An Introductory Guide to The Donald H.
    [Show full text]
  • DIVINE IMAGE 7 ,- I.Il 11, .L
    THE DIVINE IMAGE 7 ,- i.iL 11, .l,-. - . - ., -- -'C',, -, 8..-. :.'- ,, , , BY THE SAME AUTHOR Socinianism in Seuenteenlh-Century England ' Human Rights in Retrospect and Reality 1'-h ITHEDIVINE IMAGE- P' The Old Nonconformity in Fulwood l i' RELIGIOUS HUMANISM FROM HOMER TO HAMMAESKJOLD p p,- 'The theologian who surveys the broad fields of thought and experience sympathetically may be deemed a humanist. He is in favour of a humane social order and universal peace.' J. K. Mozley, Tendencies in British Theology / First published 1g72 The Lindsey Press, 1-6 Essex Street, London, WC2R SHY O The Lindsey Press I972 S\ Foreword .her the terms of her will, Miss Susan Minns of Boston established a fund in memory of her brother, Thomas, 'a descendant of John Wilson, the first Minister of the First Church in Boston'. The larger part of the income from the fund was to be used for a lectureship under the management of the First Church and of King's Chapel, Boston. Since 1941, six lectures have been given each year. The lectures for 1969 were delivered at King's Chapel, Boston, and at Meadville/Lombard Theological School in the University of Chicago. The aim of the lectures, which now appear in slightly expanded form, is to ex- amine the origins and discuss the development of what I have called 'Christian Humanism'. They were inspired by a suggestion of the late Victor Gollancz which he made some years ago in an Oxford common room- namely, that man's great need today was a religious Designed by John Rowland humanism or 'a more humanistic religion'.
    [Show full text]