William Blake

William Blake

1. 1757-1827

   • Native to London
     • SoHo
   • Family = Dissenting Whigs
     • Liberal attitudes
     • Anti-monarchy
     • Self-determination
     • Witnessed social upheavals
       • Attracted to radical groups
       • Anti-Catholic Gordon riots, 1780
   • Devout upbringing
   • No formal education
     • Apprenticed to an engraver aged 14
       • English Gothic tradition

2. Mysticism

   • Early interest in mysticism
     • Saw visions throughout his life
       • Often related to scripture
       • Punished for this by parents
   • Eidetic vision
     • Opposition of senses of time & space
       • fallen vs. fixed
       • Nature as part of fallen world
       • Aspired to an unchanging spatial realm
         • Neo-Platonic
   • Critic of empirical doctrine

3. Notable works

   • Poetical Sketches
     • Only work to use traditional letterpress
       • Moved to self-producing hand-painted manuscripts
         • Resistance of commercial orthodoxy
         • Influenced by ...
           • Children's lit.
           • Biblical imagery
         • Order of poems vary from MS to MS
     • 1783
   • Thel
     • 1789
     • 'Fall' into physical world & sexual experience
   • Songs of Innocence
     • 1789
       • Engaging in dialogue
       • Composed for children
         • Some sophisticated verse
         • Childhood vision
   • Songs of Experience
     • 1794
     • Political subtext
     • Mood of grief

4. Philosophical influences

   • Neoplatonism
     • Transcendental values
       • Beauty & Justice
     • Divinity is inside all of us
   • Emmanuel Swedenborg
     • Permissive Christianity
     • Followers formed the New Church of Jerusalem
       • Became increasingly institutionalised
     • Satired by Blake:
       • The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
         • 1790
       • Distortion of ideas
   • Paracelsus
     • Imagination
       • Central to Romantic thinking
   • Jacob Boehme
     • Mystical thinker
     • German theologian
       • Humans fallen from divine grace