Author : Kathryn S. Freeman
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 26,46 MB
Release : 1997-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780791432976
Establishes Blake's controversial, unfinished epic, The Four Zoas, as the culmination of his mythos.
Author : Magnus Ankarsjö
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 43,63 MB
Release : 2015-01-27
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0786483032
The closing years of the eighteenth century were the particular domain of literary radicals whose work challenged ideas on gender and sexuality. During this transitional period, the poetry of William Blake reflected the changing mores of society as well as his own developing notions of gender. This work presents an in-depth exploration of gender issues in Blake's three epic poems, The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. The opening chapter discusses basic concepts such as notions of apocalypse, utopia and gender, all essential to the author's reading of Blake. Background regarding the literary atmosphere of the time, which included influence from the tradition of dissent, English Jacobinism and early feminism, is also included, effectively setting the context for Blake's work. The book then examines the poems in chronological order. It concentrates particularly on male and female activity within each work (refuting the common assumption that Blake was anti-feminist) while exploring the symbolism of the poetry. Blake's repeated theme of the struggle between the sexes receives special emphasis, as does the progress of his gender vision through the three poems.
Author : Sibylle Erle
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 27,83 MB
Release : 2017-12-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1351193694
"William Blake never travelled to the continent, yet his creation myth is far more European than has ever been acknowledged. The painter Henry Fuseli introduced Blake to traditional European thinking, and Blake responded to late 18th century body-theory in his Urizen books (1794-95), which emerged from his professional work as a copy-engraver on Henry Hunter's translation of Johann Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (1789-98). Lavater's work contains hundreds of portraits and their physiognomical readings. Blake, Fuseli, Joshua Reynolds and their contemporaries took a keen interest in the ideas behind physiognomy in their search for the right balance between good likeness and type in portraits. Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy demonstrates how the problems occurring during the production of the Hunter translation resonate in Blake's treatment of the Genesis story. Blake takes us back to the creation of the human body, and interrogates the idea that 'God created man after his own likeness.' He introduces the 'Net of Religion', a device which presses the human form into material shape, giving it personality and identity. As Erle shows, Blake's startlingly original take on the creation myth is informed by Lavater's pursuit of physiognomy: the search for divine likeness, traced in the faces of their contemporary men."
Author : Kathryn S. Freeman
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 13,80 MB
Release : 2016-12-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 131718808X
It is not surprising that visitors to Blake’s cosmology – the most elaborate in the history of British text and design – often demand a map in the form of a reference book. The entries in this volume benefit from the wide range of historical information made available in recent decades regarding the relationship between Blake’s text and design and his biographical, political, social, and religious contexts. Of particular importance, the entries take account of the re-interpretations of Blake with respect to race, gender, and empire in scholarship influenced by the groundbreaking theories that have arisen since the first half of the twentieth century. The intricate fluidity of Blake’s anti-Newtonian universe eludes the fixity of definitions and schema. Central to this guide to Blake's work and ideas is Kathryn S. Freeman's acknowledgment of the paradox of providing orientation in Blake’s universe without disrupting its inherent disorientation of the traditions whereby readers still come to it. In this innovative work, Freeman aligns herself with Blake’s demand that we play an active role in challenging our own readerly habits of passivity as we experience his created and corporeal worlds.
Author : David Weir
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 185 pages
File Size : 19,84 MB
Release : 2012-02-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0791486400
Examining William Blake's poetry in relation to the mythographic tradition of the eighteenth century and emphasizing the British discovery of Hindu literature, David Weir argues that Blake's mythic system springs from the same rich historical context that produced the Oriental Renaissance. That context includes republican politics and dissenting theology—two interrelated developments that help elucidate many of the obscurities of Blake's poetry and explain much of its intellectual energy. Weir shows how Blake's poetic career underwent a profound development as a result of his exposure to Hindu mythology. By combining mythographic insight with republican politics and Protestant dissent, Blake devised a poetic system that opposed the powers of Church and King.
Author : Christopher Z. Hobson
Publisher : Associated University Presse
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 28,89 MB
Release : 1999
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780838753859
Study of William Blake's radical thought in light of his major works, such as Jerusalem (1804-20).
Author : Sheila A. Spector
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 19,48 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780838754696
Traces the evolution of hebraic etymologies and mystical grammars as indicators of a profound shift in Blake's subjective consciousness from the earliest prose tracts, worked on before 1790, to the last years of his life, when he was still completing 'Jerusalem'.
Author : Sheila A. Spector
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 48,32 MB
Release : 2001
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780838754689
Explores Blake's esoteric and religious influences
Author : Jessica Patterson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 15,7 MB
Release : 2021-12-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1009037536
In the second half of the eighteenth century, several British East India Company servants published accounts of what they deemed to be the original and ancient religion of India. Drawing on what are recognised today as the texts and traditions of Hinduism, these works fed into a booming enlightenment interest in Eastern philosophy. At the same time, the Company's aggressive conquest of Bengal was facing a crisis of legitimacy and many of the prominent political minds of the day were turning their attention to the question of empire. In this original study, Jessica Patterson situates these Company works on the 'Hindu religion' in the twin contexts of enlightenment and empire. In doing so, she uncovers the central role of heterodox religious approaches to Indian religions for enlightenment thought, East India Company policy, and contemporary ideas of empire.
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 626 pages
File Size : 16,53 MB
Release : 1998
Category :
ISBN :
An illustrated quarterly.
