-I THE CONTRARIETY OF CREATIVE INNOCENCE Lawrence Damien Lauzon B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1975 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English @ Lawrence Damien Lauzon 1979 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY October 1979 All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author, APPROVAL Name: Lawrence Damien Lauzon Degree: Master of Arts Title of Thesis: The Contrariety of Creative Innocence in "The Book of Thel" Examining Committee: Chai rperson : Paul Del any - - - Robin Blaser Senior Supervisor l __C - a Rob Dunham - -Yeter Taylo External Extminer Assistant Professor Department of Engl ish UB C Date Approved: (&/ 24/79 PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University L ibrary, and to make part ial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. T itI e of Thes i s/Project/Extended Essay The Contrariety of Creative Innocence in "The Book of Thel" Author: -- . - I e m - (signatu:e) Lawrence Damien Lauzon (name Abstract The purpose of this re-interpretation of "The Book of Thelw is two- fold: to present a radically different view of the Virgin of the drama from the established one; and to employ this new interpretation of her function, withir. the cast of its poetic identity, to locate and consoli- date discursively an understanding of the Blakean poetic ideal as "sublime allegory addressed to the intellectual powem." The prophetic voice, Blake vows, redefines the eighteenth century's understanding of the nature of allegory and the genesis of poetic inspiration. Except in Nancy Bogen's critical edition of "The Book of Thelw (1971), the history of l*Thel'l criticism viewed the Virgin as a hypocritical and self-deluded adolescent bent on naive question-begging, The present thesis proposes that nowhere does the lyrical beauty of the poem disagree with the basic magnanimity and the unimposing nature of the Virgin's character, Furthermore, it advocates the necessity of retaining Blake's emphatic distinction between "states,'l which are mental categories of existence or perception, and individuals in those "states" to apprehend the meaning of Zhristian forgiveness, The narrative pro- gression of the poem symbolizes Thel's intellectual journey towards an awakened, or self-conscious, understanding of the meaning of forgiveness, She is among the class of men Blake nominates the "Redeemed.w Her task is not to learn the sorrowful consequences of what it means to be a mother but to awaken the unexplored regions of the fallen mind, the imagination that has become engulfed in the sensuality of physid existence, to a spiritual condition whereby the re-integrated sensibility of the "true man" completely reflecta the life of the Holy Spirlt. This re-interpretation of the poem relies upon Blake's unrelenting attack against the tradition of natural perspective which had dominated the eighteenth century. Blake viewed the "lifeless sanity" of the perspectival school, championed by the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as the death and imprisonment of not only visionary and imaginative being but of humanity itself. He saw that a tyrannized submission to 'outward form, ' or the chimerical aloofness of nature*s impenetrability, resulted in the loss of man's essential divinity. Hence, a Druidic worship of nature amounted, for Blake, to a self-righteous glorification of man's satanic Selfhood, or a spurious image of humanity born of nat+ursl memory. Blake's conception of prophetic art implies a strict antinomianism. The prophetic voice is continually engaged is a re- definition of humanity. To accomplish this it must break down the established limits of form and imagination to make way for the appearance of a divine image of humanity which Blake calls "living form." Blake sees the wntinual death of God as the contrary, the inexorable 'other,' of the immortality of the human soul. The purpose of this re- interpretation of "The1 ," therefore, is to outline the achievement of the poem in terms of Blake's attack against the tradition of the TABLE OF CX)NTWTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS dlmmuL NOTP: CHAPTER I: PRELIMINARIES AND INTRODUCTION GWTER 11: PLATES 1 AND 28 THEL AND THE LIUY BUPTER 111 r PLATE 3: THEL AND THE CLOUD CMPTER 1V: PLATES 4 AND 5: THE&, THE WRM, AND THE CLAY GMPTER V; PLATE 6: THEL AND THE "VOICE OF SORROW WTER VI t "THEL'S hOTn?" APPENDIX: PLATES AND TEXT BIBLIOCBAPHY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Plate I "Thel'8 &tbn Plate I1 Frontlspieoe Plate 1 "1 8 The daughters of Mne Seraphim., ." Plate 2 #Uhy should the m2~trsssof the vales of Har,,.* Plate 3 "11: 0' little Cloud the virgin 8aid,..* Plate 4 "111 I Then Thel aetonishba viewed the Worm,. ,* Plate 5 "But he thsct ~OV- the 10trlye en Plate 6 "IVI The etsrnal gates terrific p~rter,,,~ The following abbrevlationa of works by Blake have been used in the text. ARO "AU RELIGIONS are ONEw ec *The Crystal Cablnetn n "THE IgUR W)ASn J "JERUSALEM" LBB "The Utth Blaok Bop N *Maw MMI "THE MARRIAGE of HEAVEN and HELL@ NNB "THE= Is NO NATURAL RELIGIONm LtiJ and [b] U "THE BOOK of URfZENn VfJ *A Vision of The Last Judgmentn But the natural man reoeiveth not the things of the 3pirit of God; for they eure foolishness unto himr neither can he know them, because they are spiritually disoerned. (1 Corinthians 11114) Not that we are suffioient of omelves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of Cod; Who also ha# made us able mdnisters of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. (11 Corinthians iii t 5.6) Blake's oomposite art was so far in advanoe of the intellectual climate of his age that he was forced to endure financial hardship through- out the greater part of his life, The handful of devout and faithful friends, some of them in little better financial position than himself, who used their influence to encourage patrons for Blake, brought him the greater part of his mea,gre economic success, In order to survive he had to undertake commercial enterprises whioh more often than not hindered the produotion of his own oreations. Neverthelespl, Blake marained prodigiously produotive in the face of contingent adversity. The early period is marked by an enormous range of philosophical, religious, and artistic concerns, most of which he would orchestrate on an increasingly larger scale thmughout his career, Oftentines the dates of particular wrspoisitiona overlap one another, Blake havim been swept away into further areas of inspiration, He would return to the unfinished work as the vision engaged him, This is the reason it is diff'icult to read one Blake poem in isolation, The corpus in its entirety composes a oorapelling visionary 'system.' During the early period he was sometimes o~cup2edwith ae many as three major undertakings at a time as well as his aoauaercial aormnissione. Blake's interpretation of the suuuese of the Amerlw Revolution radidly influenced hie views of social apocalypse and psyohologid. fulfilllaent. me subsequent politioal events in Fnrnce and England during the late 1780'e and early 1790'~largely complied to deternrlne his re-evaluation of Reason and Energy. The relative1y self-sufficient religious prophecies of "Songs of Innocenoe" (1784) blossomed into the more flexible form of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hellw (1790-93) in order to minutely delineate the incarnate loglc and bounding line of Energy itself, The political crises in Europe during these early years awakened in Blake a profound understanding of the deep sohiem in the nature of Reason, At Its best, Blake's reason is similar to the Renaissance notion of intuitive reason or apprehension: ti divinely inspired uonsoious- ness of the potential divinity of man which can be realieed through the lfZMration of Energy. More often, however, Blake's reason aanlfeets itself as discursive reason or comprehension which operates through deductive or inductive processes to establish absolute laws of being, laws which can then be enauted as represalve soeial uodes. The prinoiple achievement of the early works is to dlstingdsh between Reason and Energy as genuine contraries and fallen reason as a speutroue negation of Energy. It would seem that the body of Blake's early works deplot the struggle to amlve at the swinglrrament when he will actually name the four great eternals. They are present in the early oompositlons In their embryonic etates and the reader should be aareful to apprehend the struggle each endures to emerge as a ulcrasly identified - entity. An exemplary uase of this stsruggle may be seen in the contrariety of Reason and Energy, Anne Mellor, Blake's HUM Form Divlne (~erkeleyt Unlverslty of Wifornla Press, 19741, pa 45. Reason is the fome that draws a bounding line irround Energy and thus makes possible the creation of an artistic imge...Only when the expanang vector of Energy meets the contracti veotor of reason can a stabilieing line be drawn and a