William Blakes's Great Task

William Blakes's Great Task
Author: Andrew Solomon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2000
Genre:
ISBN: 9780952221128

Jerusalem, the last and most fully developed version of Blake's personal myth, is recognised as an important part of our cultural heritage, apparently full of deep meaning. But exactly what that meaning is has been little understood. At first sight Blake's poem lacks narrative continuity, presents no clear argument and shows little structural cohesion, while his illustrations, beautiful though they are, are often difficult to relate to the text. Yet underlying its baffling surface there is a coherent and relatively simple pattern, and this reveals in a unique way the psychological and spiritual processes that shape our lives and give them direction. Blake wrote of Man's "Fall into Division and his Resurrection to Unity". The pattern symbolised by the Fall occurs inevitably in every human life and it accounts for all that is evil and destructive in human behaviour and all the inner conflicts by which we are torn. While we cannot avoid it, it is open to us as individuals eventually to rise above it, to become free of those conflicts and of the compulsive behaviour associated with them. This is not just another academic interpretation. Blake's myth is considered here in a way that explains our conflicts and their origins in the delusions that we cling to. It leads to the point of letting go of the central delusion, that concerning one's own identity, or 'ego', which is a supremely challenging act of self-liberation -- Blake calls it the 'annihilation of the selfhood' -- leading to the 'Resurrection to Unity'. Blake's art and poetry help to evoke disruptive forces active within us which we prefer to keep hidden, but which we need to face intelligently if we are to become free of them. Not surprisingly, many people find this disturbing; but it can be immeasurably rewarding. Nowadays there is considerable interest in Eastern teachings which have a similar purpose; but our typical Western starting point, conditioned by centuries of Judaeo-Christian teaching of an external law-giving God, is different from that of, say, Buddhists or Hindus, for whom the supreme authority is to be found within. Blake's myth reflects Western conditioning and the particular patterns that result from it, which we may be able to recognise in ourselves; but its end-point, freedom from all conditioning, is universal. Illustrations include a complete reproduction of one of Blake's black and white copies of Jerusalem.

The Task

The Task
Author: William Cowper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1810
Genre: English poetry
ISBN:

The Greatest Works of William Blake (With Complete Original Illustrations)

The Greatest Works of William Blake (With Complete Original Illustrations)
Author: William Blake
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 973
Release: 2023-12-22
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Taking his inspiration from the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages, Blake invented the process of creating Illuminated Books. Between 1788 and early 1795 Blake published a series of fifteen Illuminated Books. He returned to creating Illuminated Books in 1804 when he began work on Milton (finished in 1808 or later) and Jerusalem. Blake committed himself in the minute particulars of producing his Illuminated Books. The process included creating a mental image, drawing, composing the design and poetry of the plate, engraving, printing, painting, compiling and selling. From inception to final production the color copy of Jerusalem was labored over for sixteen years. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

William Blake

William Blake
Author: Edina Adam
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1606066420

A richly illustrated, comprehensive introduction to the visionary artist William Blake. William Blake (1757–1827) is a universal artist—an inspiration to musicians, poets, performers, and visual artists worldwide. By combining his poetry and images on the page through radical printing techniques, Blake created some of the most striking and enduring images in art. His personal struggles in a period of political terror and oppression; creativity, inventiveness, and technical innovation; and vision and political commitment keep his work relevant today. Featuring over 130 color images, this accessible yet comprehensive introduction to Blake’s achievements and ambition includes discussions of his legacy in America; relationship to the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque artists who preceded him; visionary imagination; and unparalleled skill as a printmaker.

The Cambridge Companion to William Blake

The Cambridge Companion to William Blake
Author: Morris Eaves
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2003-01-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107494451

Poet, painter, and engraver William Blake died in 1827 in obscure poverty with few admirers. The attention paid today to his remarkable poems, prints, and paintings would have astonished his contemporaries. Admired for his defiant, uncompromising creativity, he has become one of the most anthologized and studied writers in English and one of the most studied and collected British artists. His urge to cast words and images into masterpieces of revelation has left us with complex, forceful, extravagant, some times bizarre works of written and visual art that rank among the greatest challenges to plain understanding ever created. This Companion aims to provide guidance to Blake's work in fresh and readable introductions: biographical, literary, art historical, political, religious, and bibliographical. Together with a chronology, guides to further reading, and glossary of terms, they identify the key points of departure into Blake's multifarious world and work.

William Blake's Religious Vision

William Blake's Religious Vision
Author: Jennifer G. Jesse
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0739177907

In this innovative study, Jesse challenges the prevailing view of Blake as an antinomian and describes him as a theological moderate who defended an evangelical faith akin to the Methodism of John Wesley. She arrives at this conclusion by contextualizing Blake's works not only within Methodism, but in relation to other religious groups he addressed in his art, including the Established Church, deism, and radical religions. Further, she analyzes his works by sorting out the theological "road signs" he directed to each audience. This approach reveals Blake engaging each faction through its most prized beliefs, manipulating its own doctrines through visual and verbal guide-posts designed to communicate specifically with that group. She argues that, once we collate Blake's messages to his intended audiences--sounding radical to the conservatives and conservative to the radicals--we find him advocating a system that would have been recognized by his contemporaries as Wesleyan in orientation. This thesis also relies on an accurate understanding of eighteenth-century Methodism: Jesse underscores the empirical rationalism pervading Wesley's theology, highlighting differences between Methodism as practiced and as publicly caricatured. Undergirding this project is Jesse's call for more rigorous attention to the dramatic character of Blake's works. She notes that scholars still typically use phrases like "Blake says" or "Blake believes," followed by some claim made by a Blakean character, without negotiating the complex narrative dynamics that might enable us to understand the rhetorical purposes of that statement, as heard by Blake's respective audiences. Jesse maintains we must expect to find reflections in Blake's works of all the theologies he engaged. The question is: what was he doing with them, and why? In order to divine what Blake meant to communicate, we must explore how those he targeted would have perceived his arguments. Jesse concludes that by analyzing the dramatic character of Blake's works theologically through this wide-angled, audience-oriented approach, we see him orchestrating a grand rapprochement of the extreme theologies of his day into a unified vision that integrates faith and reason.

William Blake

William Blake
Author: Harold Bloom
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2008
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1438117078

Presents a selection of important older literary criticism of selected works by nineteenth-century poet William Blake.

William Blake

William Blake
Author: Alfred Thomas Story
Publisher: Ardent Media
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1893
Genre:
ISBN: