Chapter 4 William Blake
Of all the romantic poets of the eighteenth century, Blake is the most distinctive one. Blake’s first book of poems, Poetical Sketches, which he had printed when he was twenty-six years old, showed his dissatisfaction with the reigning poetic tradition and his restless quest for new form and techniques. Blake can be claimed to be the first important Romantic poet, showing contempt for the rule of reason, opposing the classical tradition of the eighteenth century, and treasuring the individual’s imagination. Blake wrote his poems in plain and direct language. His poems often carry the lyric beauty with profound meaning. He distrusted the abstract and tends to embody his views with visual images. Symbolism to some extent is an evident feature of his poetry.
Critical Perspectives
1.Feminist Criticism
Lucy Cogan, in “William Blake’s The Book of Los and the Female Prophetic Tradition”, talks about author William Blake’s book The Book of Los and his documented encounter with a female prophet. It discusses Blake’s attitude towards women and religion. Blake’s works also include millenarianism of his times and the role of gender in prophetic speech. Blake’s deception of imaginative redemption in discussed.[1]
2.Eco-Criticism
M. A. Elma Dedovic-Atilla and Senad Becirovic, in“Human Image in Blake’s Poetry”, explores the representation of the human in William Blake’s poetry. In order to grasp depiction of humankind in all its depth, a number of constructs in close relation to the human image are being investigated including the role and nature of God, nature, animal world, as well as the place and illustration of the world of children and adults. All of the concepts are examined in regards to the poet’s dichotomist depiction of the concepts in his both earlier and later literary works, culminating in the ultimate reconciliation and reunion of the seemingly opposing perceptions within the later literary writings.[2]
3.Canonization Study
Thora Brylowe, in “Of Gothic Architects and Grecian Rods: William Blake, Antiquarianism and the History of Art”, focuses on the anticlassicism of British artist William Blake and how it impacted his interpretation of art history. Thora explains the relationship between classical antiquarians and British connoisseurship, explores why Blake’s feelings towards antiquarianism and Hellenism changed throughout his life, and examines how Irish scientist William Hamilton influenced Blake’s work.[3]
4.New Historicism
Angus Whitehead, in “‘Humble but Respectable’: Recovering the Neighbourhood Surrounding William and Catherine Blake’s Last Residence, No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand, c. 1820-1827”, draws upon a wide range of unpublished archival sources, Angus presents a detailed reconstruction of Fountain Court and its residents, William and Catherine Blake during the period William and Catherine Blake were resident at No. 3 Fountain Court (c. 1820-1827). The paper presents important new information concerning the society and milieu in Fountain Court and its neighbourhood during 1820-1827. This fresh archival evidence enables us to identify and precisely locate for the first time the “humble but respectable” fellow lodgers and neighbours living in Fountain Court during William and Catherine Blake’s period of residence, and provides a detailed picture of life in the Blakes’ neighbourhood during this period, and of trades conducted in the court, as well as the close familial and social relationships existing between a number of households immediately surrounding the Blakes’ residence. Such relationships provide a context for William and Catherine’s own relationships with their brother-in-law and landlord at 3 Fountain Court, Henry Banes and his wife Sarah Banes (née Boucher) and two of their neighbours and fellow lodgers in the court, the carver and gilder John George Lohr, and Blake’s employer and fellow artist John Barrow. The Blakes’ last residence was not in a sleepy, forgotten backwater, as some contemporary accounts and later biographers appear to suggest. As my paper demonstrates, Fountain Court in the 1820s, leading directly off the Strand, a major commercial thoroughfare of the largest metropolis of the period, was comprised of a small community, thriving with social and commercial activity. The reconstruction provides a detailed immediate context in which to view afresh William and Catherine’s years living and working in Fountain Court.[4]
Morton D. Paley, in “William Blake’s Milton/A Poem and the Miltonic Matrix of 1791-1810”, argues that from the time when “Milton lovd me in childhood ＆ shewd me his face”, William Blake felt a special relationship with John Milton. He would therefore have felt a great interest in the extraordinary spate of publishing and pictorial activity (sometimes both together) that occurred in the last decade of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth. He was, indeed, mentioned as a participant in two major Milton projects planned during this period, but neither materialized. His own Milton/A Poem, completed c. 1811, addresses two major subjects of previous discussion: Milton’s political commitment and his relations with the women in his life. Characteristically, Blake does not adopt any prior positions, but renders his own views, which are different from any of them.[5]
Roland Boer, in “E. P. Thompson, Antinomianism, and the Theology of William Blake”, presents a close engagement with the historian E. P. Thompson’s reading of the artist and writer William Blake (1757-1827) in Witness Against the Beast (1993). In particular, the interest is in the way Thompson comes to a theological insight through his interaction with Blake (this article is therefore not a study of Blake himself). Thompson explores Blake’s writings and art, his connections with radical Dissenting groups in London, the light that the archives of the Muggletonians shed on such groups, and the theological positions of these groups. This search leads Thompson to identify the radical possibilities of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith. In the hands of these groups, the doctrine became a radical antinomian position with both theological and political ramifications. Thompson’s insight is not merely to have (re-)discovered these radical possibilities, but also to have come to the position that religion and politics are inescapably interwoven.[6]
Thomas J. J. Altizer, in “The Revolutionary Vision of William Blake”, argues that it was William Blake’s insight that the Christian churches, by inverting the Incarnation and the dialectical vision of Paul, have repressed the body, divided God from creation, substituted judgment for grace, and repudiated imagination, compassion, and the original apocalyptic faith of early Christianity. Blake’s prophetic poetry thus contributes to the renewal of Christian ethics by a process of subversion and negation of Christian moral, ecclesiastical, and theological traditions, which are recognized precisely as inversions of Jesus, and therefore as instances of the forms of evil that God-in-Christ overcomes through Incarnation, reversing the Fall. Blake’s great epic poems, particularly Milton (1804-1808) and Jerusalem (1804-1820), embody his heterodox representation of the final coincidence of Christ and Satan through which, at last, all things are made new.[7]
5.Comparative Study(https://www.daowen.com)
Ryan J. Davidson, in “A Proposal for Revaluation: Points of Contact and Sides of Likeness between William Blake and Walt Whitman”, proposes an approach to evaluate the relationship between William Blake and Walt Whitman. Ryan begins by grounding my proposal in a critical framework. It is framed by a book history approach, but also an approach to 19th century American literature as a post-colonial literature. In regards to the book history element he traces an outline of Blake’s publication history and the poems of Blake’s that Whitman might have encountered, then provides examples of the similarities between Blake and Whitman. This paper concludes with a discussion of the implications it may have on ideas of literary influence. This is the beginning of a much larger project wherein Ryan traces the actual influences which created the similarities that he outlines here”.[8]
6.Reader-oriented Criticism
Andreea Paris-Popa, in “William Blake’s The Tyger as an Expression of the Reader’s Futile Search for Authorial Intent”, discusses that reader response criticism warns against the literary interpreter’s endeavor to uncover the author’s intention in order to reconstruct the original meaning of the literary text. The present essay aims at providing a way of understanding this fundamental critical fallacy from the perspective of reader response criticism by allowing for this critical stance to be emphasized with the help of literature, and more specifically, of William Blake’s famous Songs of Innocence and of Experience poem The Tyger. In this perspective, the poem can be seen as stressing the potential futile quest for authorial intent in the process of literary interpretation, as well as the consequences of perceiving the literary text as an echo of its creator rather than a reader-reflected image and the interpretative perils associated with an insistent quest on the part of the reader to discover the origin of the text to the detriment of a creative construction of meaning.[9]
【注释】
[1]Cogan L. “ William Blake’s The Book of Los and the Female Prophetic Tradition”. Romanticism, 2015, 21(1):48-58.
[2]Dedovic-Atilla M A E, Becirovic S. “Human Image in Blake’s Poetry”. European Researcher, 2018, 9(4):284-290.
[3]Brylowe T. “Of Gothic Architects and Grecian Rods: William Blake, Antiquarianism and the History of Art”. Romanticism, 2012, 18(1):89-104.
[4]Whitehead A. “‘Humble but Respectable’: Recovering the Neighbourhood Surrounding William and Catherine Blake’s Last Residence, No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand, c. 1820-1827”.University of Toronto Quarterly, 2011, 80(4):858-879.
[5]Paley M D. “William Blake’s Milton/A Poem and the Miltonic Matrix of 1791-1810”. University of Toronto Quarterly, 2011, 80(4):786-814.
[6]Boer R. “E. P. Thompson, Antinomianism, and the Theology of William Blake”. Sino-Christian Studies, 2009, 8:31-52.
[7]Altizer T J J. “The Revolutionary Vision of William Blake”. Journal of Religious Ethics, 2009, 37(1):33-38.
[8]Davidson R J. “A Proposal for Revaluation: Points of Contact and Sides of Likeness between William Blake and Walt Whitman”. Hawliyat, 2018(18):61-76.
[9]Paris-Popa A. “William Blake’s The Tyger as an Expression of the Reader’s Futile Search for Authorial Intent”. East-West Cultural Passage, 2016, 16(1):110-119.