William Blake Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Sin duda, hay composiciones que trascienden lo musical, ya que suman a su belleza y categoría temáticas que nunca debiera caer en el olvido; también poseen grandes posibilidades didácticas. Este es el caso de El pequeño deshollinador, una... more

Parsi embroidery is an amalgamation of four distinct traditions of the East and West. Persian, Chinese, Indian and European elements and symbols come together in this unique Heritage of Humanity. Since the community is facing demographic... more

Parsi embroidery is an amalgamation of four distinct traditions of the East and West. Persian, Chinese, Indian and European elements and symbols come together in this unique Heritage of Humanity. Since the community is facing demographic extinction, it is important to record this craft tradition and understand its motifs and message.

The article is devoted to the image of Russia and Russian territories in works of William Blake. We consider the possible aspects of the poet's acquaintance with Russia, Russian territories mentioned in his correspondence and writings.... more

The article is devoted to the image of Russia and Russian territories in works of William Blake. We consider the possible aspects of the poet's acquaintance with Russia, Russian territories mentioned in his correspondence and writings. Jack Lindsay wrote that «Russian merchant» James Vine ordered copies of Blake's books; but this merchant he was not Russian, Vine traded with Russia, that probably contributed to his description as a «Russian merchant». Alfred Story mentions that Grodna, the name of Blake’s character, is translates from Russian as ‘land’, that is deeply wrong. The possible Slavic etymology of the name goes back to the town of Grodno (Grodna, Hrodna) in modern Belarus; in times of Blake this city was a part of the Russian Empire. Blake mentions Russia and its separate territories in his great prophecies: he mentions the traditional names for Russian lands, caring little about modern politics: for example, he mentions as equal territories Russia, Poland, (Great) Tartary, Siberia. The last three countries became the parts of the Russian Empire by Blake’s time. Blake has never been to the continent, and his view of Russia was quite vague, as evidenced by references to Russian territories in his prophetic poems.

Num texto pertencente ao espólio, Fernando Pessoa começa com a seguinte a frase: «O poeta é essencialmente um místico». Com esta citação como ponto de partida, pretendo, nesta comunicação, olhar para Fernando Pessoa como herdeiro de uma... more

Num texto pertencente ao espólio, Fernando Pessoa começa com a seguinte a frase: «O poeta é essencialmente um místico». Com esta citação como ponto de partida, pretendo, nesta comunicação, olhar para Fernando Pessoa como herdeiro de uma tradição, não só mística como também profética, considerando, em particular, a figura de William Blake. Para isso, e dado que um dos objectivos deste colóquio é a revisão do estado da arte dos estudos pessoanos, tenciono, primeiro, fazer o levantamento e análise da bibliografia que aproxima as obras de Blake e Pessoa e, depois, sugerir outras linhas de leitura a partir do exame do inédito mencionado anteriormente e dos sublinhados de Pessoa nas duas obras referentes a William Blake, que se encontram na sua biblioteca, a primeira, uma edição de Poems of William Blake e, a segunda, um volume, datado de 1906, da correspondência do poeta inglês. Deste modo, irei examinar de que forma é que Fernando Pessoa adoptou e adaptou alguns aspectos da mundividência de Blake, e da sua visão da poesia, para a sua obra, nomeadamente, para a criação de Alberto Caeiro.

The Devil's Party: John Milton in Blakean poetics

An undergraduate lecture in a module on Romanticism. References are to ROMANTICISM: AN ANTHOLOGY, 3rd ed., ed. Duncan Wu, Blackwell, 2006. References to Blake's marginalia are to POETRY AND PROSE OF WILLIAM BLAKE, ed. Geoffrey Keynes,... more

An undergraduate lecture in a module on Romanticism.
References are to ROMANTICISM: AN ANTHOLOGY, 3rd ed., ed. Duncan Wu, Blackwell, 2006.
References to Blake's marginalia are to POETRY AND PROSE OF WILLIAM BLAKE, ed. Geoffrey Keynes, Nonesuch, 1948.

Blake's "The Divine Image", in fact, celebrates the traditional Christian virtues of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. Man, by nature, also possesses these virtues, but fails to realize it. A man can rise up to the level of God if only he... more

Blake's "The Divine Image", in fact, celebrates the traditional Christian virtues of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love. Man, by nature, also possesses these virtues, but fails to realize it. A man can rise up to the level of God if only he realizes the inherent qualities in him. In this regard the poem adopts a didactic tone. It is nothing but a sermon in verse. It is extremely simple but this deceptive simplicity deepens once the reader deflects his thought towards the philosophical suggestions of the poem. For Blake man is not merely created in the image of God, but Man is God and God is Man. God and Man are the same, in so far as these attributes of God viz., Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love are shared by God and Man. The poem "A Divine Image" on the other hand, tries to show that cruelty, jealousy, terror and secrecy are abstract ideas but they have no reality apart from human beings. It is from the heart of human beings that cruelty comes. It is human beings who are jealous, who cause terror, who create secrecy. Human heart is strong like iron. It is as powerful and as full of potentially destructive, as well as constructive, energy as a forge or a furnace. The human heart is not soft and tender but a consuming mouth, like that of a beast. The experience, for Blake means the sophisticated, post-lapsarian plight of the human beings. Blake might have wished to include this poem as the counterpart to "The Divine Image", just as he did with regard to "The Lamb" and "The Tyger" and formulated the lines in a way resembling that of "The Tyger", but never included this in the Songs of Experience during his life time.

This book examines literary representations of human and non-human animality in British Romanticism, a period in which scientific, political, and industrial revolutions radically transformed the status of the human and redefined the... more

THE YEAR WHEN A journey of good and evil w. Blake undertook with the publishing of a series of poems called “SONGS OF INNOCENCE”. SIMPLISTIC IN NATURE AND STYLE, it appealed to different level of knowledge. This Paper will explore that... more

THE YEAR WHEN A journey of good and evil w. Blake undertook with the publishing of a series of poems called “SONGS OF INNOCENCE”. SIMPLISTIC IN NATURE AND STYLE, it appealed to different level of knowledge. This Paper will explore that very Unseen side of Blake’s Poems.

Conference paper. This paper examines parallels between William Blake's myth of a failed god in works like _The Book of Urizen_ and the implicit narrative of Bob Dylan's conversion and disillusionment during his gospel period. The paper... more

Conference paper. This paper examines parallels between William Blake's myth of a failed god in works like _The Book of Urizen_ and the implicit narrative of Bob Dylan's conversion and disillusionment during his gospel period. The paper looks especially at Dylan's "Jokerman" and "Man of Peace."

As William Blake's work stretches beyond its textual realm and transcends the time and place of its creation, it finds a home in 1960s America's music scene, where its popular reception and transformation by artists such as Jim Morrison... more

As William Blake's work stretches beyond its textual realm and transcends the time and place of its creation, it finds a home in 1960s America's music scene, where its popular reception and transformation by artists such as Jim Morrison and Allen Ginsberg needs further investigation. The spirit of rebellion, as well as the visionary and hallucinatory character of the English bard's poetry has proven to be an endless source of inspiration for stars such as Morrison, who named his famous counter-culture band " The Doors " after a Blakean quote from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, referring to the opening towards the Infinite. Another notable transmedia adaptation is that of Allen Ginsberg, a self-proclaimed Blake disciple who trusted that the only way to reach true poetry was through music. Consequently, he set the Songs of Innocence and of Experience to music and released them as an album, giving them a contemporary voice and sound. This paper will present a different, less examined facet of four American psychedelic songs – The Doors' " Break on Through " and " End of the Night " , as well as Allen Ginsberg's " The Sick Rose " and " Ah! Sunflower " – by using David Bolter and Richard Grusin's concept of remediation, as it appears in their work Remediation: Understanding New Media (2000). However, instead of applying remediation to the online realm, its double logic of immediacy and hypermediacy will be helpful in analysing the re-embodiment of poetry into music. If the latter is present in the musicians' mediation by their production companies, performances, album covers, textual information, as well as the imprint of the music industry that supports them, the concept of immediacy is rendered rather differently. While Jim Morrison completely integrates William Blake's lines into his song and brings the listener closer to the experience, as if personally having gone through the journey beyond the doors of perception, Allen Ginsberg erases his compositional input by maintaining he could reach Blake's intention and render the songs in the way they had been originally sung by their author.

presentation at the royal academy of arts

This thesis examines how William Blake represents God and Christianity in Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and to what extent this representation parallels Blake’s religious outlook. First, Blake’s religious outlook as demonstrably... more

This thesis examines how William Blake represents God and Christianity in Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and to what extent this representation parallels Blake’s religious outlook. First, Blake’s religious outlook as demonstrably recorded in his biographies and in the referential works written on his literary works, is handled to better understand his religious presentation in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. How he regards God and interprets Christianity is clearly depicted in the study. Then, 15 selected poems that are relevant to each other in terms of religion are analysed in detail. The selected poems have been analysed thematically. The data obtained as a result of the analyses proves that Blake does not show a consistent representation of God and Christianity in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. More clearly, the concepts of God and Christianity are represented through different means in different poems. Therefore, this representation somehow contrasts with Blake’s own religious outlook. In other words, his understanding of God and Christianity is presented in a controversial way in some of the analysed poems in this thesis.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the commentary and ideas of the architectural critic Ian Nairn (1930-1983) can be plotted into a coherent framework. To achieve this, influences referenced by and attributed to Nairn, such... more

The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the commentary and ideas of the architectural critic Ian Nairn (1930-1983) can be plotted into a coherent framework. To achieve this, influences referenced by and attributed to Nairn, such as conservationist and townscape architectural critics, humanist literature of the early to mid-20th century, architects and artists of the Baroque, Romantic, 19th century and modern ages will be discussed. Views and ideas derived from those influences will be compared against the range of commentary and ideas forwarded by Nairn. This research aims to demonstrate that Nairn held a range of coherent values on people, society and aesthetics, from which a framework of his thought can be plotted and understood as a liberal, relational Romanticism, but with a fundamental proviso of a critical stance with regards to labels and classification for the danger of leading to dogmatic ideology. Nairn held critical stance on Rationalism and formulaic Enlightenment ideals (and the encouragement of manipulation of such ideals); of which an overlap can be seen with Blakean Romanticism. Nairn valued the mutual importance of developing and supporting individual and community identities, but always at a human scale of the particular rather than an abstracted concept. This research will also make the claim that Nairn’s stance has a positive impact not only on the development of the built environment, but also politics and society.

The term ‘conversion narrative’ lacks proper definition and can be understood more broadly than is often the case, underlining its fictive nature. I show this by reading William Blake’s Milton a Poem as a conversion narrative, exploring... more

The term ‘conversion narrative’ lacks proper definition and can be understood more broadly than is often the case, underlining its fictive nature. I show this by reading William Blake’s Milton a Poem as a conversion narrative, exploring how Blake weaves a wider discourse of conversion around the conversion of his protagonist Milton that forms the narrative backbone of the book. This wider discourse shows us glimpses of Paul’s conversion and conversion in Jakob Boehme’s writings. The result is a work that challenges the idea of a conversion narrative as focussing on the author’s past experience, showing how its ultimate focus is, instead, on the reader.

The greater part of this article is devoted to works by Charles Baudelaire but comparisons between aspects of his poetry and that of William Blake are central to the discussion of poems by Baudelaire in LES FLEURS DU MAL which feature a... more

The greater part of this article is devoted to works by Charles Baudelaire but comparisons between aspects of his poetry and that of William Blake are central to the discussion of poems by Baudelaire in LES FLEURS DU MAL which feature a major visual component sometimes addressed to a particular painting or sculpture. Here there lies a possible hint of some affinity with the poetry and visual art of William Blake. Furthermore, an Iranian artist has made interesting observations on the relevance of Blake's 'O Rose, Thou Art Sick' to Baudelaire's understanding of the relationship between beauty and decadence.

Review of "Christopher Smart," by Neil Curry ( 2005).

"Twilight in Italy" demonstrates Lawrence’s subversive use of literary form and his challenging vision, proving that geography is able to shape and/or reshape personal identity. It is in this very special volume that Lawrence forges a... more

"Twilight in Italy" demonstrates Lawrence’s subversive use of literary form and his challenging vision, proving that geography is able to shape and/or reshape personal identity. It is in this very special volume that Lawrence forges a highly original narrative formula, one worthy of critical attention given that it “cuts across literary genres", bringing together narrative, essay and poetry while depicting inward images, which we may call “selfscapes” full of warmth and colour.
There is an autobiographical impulse in all of Lawrence’s writings. However, "Twilight in Italy" lacks the intimate, domestic details that prevail in "Sea and Sardinia". Much more reflexive and philosophical, Lawrence’s quest for transcendence and tranquillity is an account of his ongoing preoccupation with whatever might lie beyond the visible. His stylistic powers are at their best in this lamento on the ubi sunt theme, albeit one that is oriented not towards the past but towards the future.

The Romantic Period in England can be considered as indicative of 'an age of crises' because the era witnessed several political affairs, ideologies and strategies such as slaver trade, colonialism, American and French Revolutions. These... more

The Romantic Period in England can be considered as indicative of 'an age of crises' because the era witnessed several political affairs, ideologies and strategies such as slaver trade, colonialism, American and French Revolutions. These political and social changes all signalled 'chaos' which would dominate European political, cultural, and literary life for the next quarter of a century. Therefore, it was inevitable that Romantic writers were influenced by the political and social events in Europe. They were considerably aware of British expansionism. It would not be incorrect to claim that there is a direct correlation between socio-political revolution and the literary revolution in Britain. No matter what their ideological stance was, some Romantic poets of the era, like S. T. Coleridge, William Cowper, William Blake and Robert Southey, reflected their observations of the colonialist activities in their works. Some other poets of the era, however, like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, tried to especially avoid subjects concerning European colonialism in their writings. They were concerned with escape from day-today reality, with images and narratives remarkable for their historical or geographical exoticism. This paper will analyse these two reactions of the English Romantic poets; those who directly dealt with colonialism and those who principally presented orientalist and exotic elements in their poems.

Con quelle che altrove abbiamo chiamato 'trasfigurazioni nella luce', si arriva per gradi ad un'assoluta semplificazione, anzi alla scomparsa d'ogni forma, e financo d'ogni colore. Tocchiamo qui infatti i limiti estremi del simbolismo... more

Con quelle che altrove abbiamo chiamato 'trasfigurazioni nella luce', si arriva per gradi ad un'assoluta semplificazione, anzi alla scomparsa d'ogni forma, e financo d'ogni colore. Tocchiamo qui infatti i limiti estremi del simbolismo visivo antropomorfo, e sfioriamo il mistero dei simboli del sacrificio e dell'eternità, che sono rispettivamente la fiamma e la luce. Partendo dalle immagini di fiamme danzanti che tutto consumano, e passando attraverso la ricchissima iconografia delle aure di luce e dei nimbi luni-solari, si arriva così fino alla più pura, abbacinante epifania di luce del fulmine globulare, particolarmente cara all'arte del Buddhismo Vajrayana.
Se tutte quelle che precedono sono, per dirla con linguaggio alchemico, semplici trasmutazioni della forma umana che via via acquisisce, in apparenza, sempre nuove forme, ma in realtà rinvia sempre a sè stessa, qui si attinge finalmente l'unica vera metamorfosi, che, come dice la parola stessa, implica il passare 'al di là' di tutte le forme possibili, nell'informale angelico o addirittura nel divino non manifestato. Quasi insospettabile per un artista del Cinquecento, proprio così Lorenzo Lotto raffigura, in una tarsìa lignea del Duomo di Bergamo, Dio Creatore mediante il lessico del 'corpo' trasfigurato dell'uomo: un solo occhio centrale aperto, dal quale irradiano sproporzionate braccia e gambe vistosamente anamorfosate, avvolto da un fiammeggiante nimbo solare. Simboli dell'uomo gli uni, simbolo dell'Eterno l'altro.

This paper investigates the use of demons in videogames. It analyses how representations of demons in videogames replicate and subvert theological and socio-historic representations. While demons can be seen as ‘loans’ from Christianity,... more

This paper investigates the use of demons in videogames. It analyses how representations of demons in videogames replicate and subvert theological and socio-historic representations. While demons can be seen as ‘loans’ from Christianity, their representations in videogames often rely on syntheses of religious and secular sources, including Christian theology, world mythologies, conspiracy theory, and post-Miltonic literary appropriations of Satan as humanistic liberator and symbol of desire. These produce representations genealogically linked to but distinct from traditional Christian representations of demons. This paper looks at how the figuration of demons in recent videogames, primarily DmC: Devil May Cry (2013), and Shin Megami Tensei IV (2013), fit into the secular ideological legacy of the Enlightenment, in which the demon departs from purely a representation of evil and becomes recast as a polyvalent symbol capable of exploring a number of human themes, including desire, liberation, and control.

本文分析了英国诗人威廉·布莱克作品在20世纪早期被译入汉语时所发生的跨语际嬗变，通过案例说明了早期文学翻译奠基者对后世文化的影响，并试图在源语言中重构诗人的核心理念与形象。

Abstract: Meaninglessness is one of the characteristics of modernism which presumes that meaning exists only in the structural whole. Modernism came into being in a period, when war, just before and during the outbreak of World War I,... more

Abstract: Meaninglessness is one of the characteristics of modernism which presumes that meaning exists only in the structural whole. Modernism came into being in a period, when war, just before and during the outbreak of World War I, shattered into pieces the very structure of urban civilization, and when people could see only the disjointed fragments instead of meaningful structures. Eliot's The Waste Land, ‘The Hollow Men’, etc. are the classic examples of this. This draft-article attempts to show: (a) how the lamentations for the absence of meaning in the wake of the devastation of war have been expressed and permeated in modernist philosophy; (b) the meaninglessness of fragments in modernist philosophy is, in fact, a newly modified development of a fundamental philosophical question concerning the significance of, and interrelation between, the whole and the part; (c) One crucial development of this question flows through the modern linguistics where the whole structure is considered to be the lying-in room of meaning, and the fragmented/isolated units of that structure are considered completely meaningless. Incidentally, the protagonist of this stream is Ferdinand de Saussure, and this draft-article tries to show that Saussurean way of thinking is not an isolated unit, but a part (parole) of a great philosophical whole (langue) which finds its course through a rough set of contemporaries, viz. Ramprasad, Marx, Rabindranath, Plekhanov, Mao Zedong, Levi Strauss, TS Eliot, Jibanananda Dash, Kabir Suman et al. This draft-article ultimately seeks to explain literature by applying the contrast of langue and parole, the dichotomy Saussure invented and deftly exploited in discussing the fundamental question of part and whole in the field of linguistics.

Key to figures in Butlin 662, "Satan Calling up His Legions," the version now in Petworth House, done for Elizabeth Ilive, Countess of Egremont. Blake seems to have managed to squeeze in all the devil-deities Milton mentions (a few... more

Key to figures in Butlin 662, "Satan Calling up His Legions," the version now in Petworth House, done for Elizabeth Ilive, Countess of Egremont. Blake seems to have managed to squeeze in all the devil-deities Milton mentions (a few classical gods excepted) to this one picture. I mention that my arguments about Butlin 538.3 (Nativity Ode for Thomas), in Appendix III of another essay on this site ("William Blake wrote 'The Angry God of this World & his Basileia' atop Butlin 812.3 ('The Mission of Virgil')"), do apply here; it should be noticed that a number of similar devices, strategies, and portrayals are shared with our picture and that one.
Here again (as in the predecessor tempera, Butlin 661 and in Butlin 538.3), the "architect" (_PL_ 1:732), is portrayed as the Enochian 'watcher' Azael, following the speculation of John Callander in his 1750 edition of Book 1.
This entails that the predecessor--Butlin 661--to our picture is the first well-substantiated portrayal, by Blake, of a 'watcher' from the _First Book of Enoch_.
Blake has included a miniature self-portrait (as Azael/Mulciber, the "architect" of Pandemonium) in both our picture and in Butlin 661. While the caricatural portrayal of the "architect" in 538.3--the later picture for the Nativity Ode--makes his identity as a 'watcher' overt, in our tempera painting Blake is more substantially and 'materially' involved with the "architect," for Blake added gold to our tempera, thereby making him an artistic worker in gold (like Azael or Mulciber).
Blake is also the "architect" of Pandemonium insofar as he has made an artistic structure for *ALL* the demons/devils.
Note also the number of figures Blake carries over from his illuminated books (and/or independent prints)--Mammon (Nebuchadnezzar), Chemos (from _Urizen_) and Belial (from _Urizen_) are examples of these. Please comment!
Blake seems to have gotten more sophisticated in the Nativity Ode picture, which is clearly later than our illustration for Book 1 of _Paradise Lost_.

published in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 47 (2013)