Revisiting William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell : a reading against Kathleen Raine's Blake and Antiquity

Krešimir Vunić

doi:10.5817/BSE2020-1-14

Revisiting William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell : a reading against Kathleen Raine's Blake and Antiquity

Vol.46,No.1(2020)

Krešimir Vunić

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2020-1-14

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/142612

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Abstract

William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a text that can easily be misinterpreted and this is primarily due to its register and tone; Blake has written a text in which what appears to be mystical insight may blind the reader to a misunderstanding of its major themes. The arts, and specifically the art of poetry and the relationship between the artist and society are what are central in this text, as well as a meditation on the nature of human experience. Beginning with a polemic against Kathleen Raine's statements in Blake and Antiquity, what will be explored here will be the contextual framework of Blake's poetics in this text and their further implications.

Keywords:
William Blake; art; poetry; the senses; society; myth; experience

Pages:
279–288

References

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Adams, Hazard (2014) Thinking Through Blake: Essays in Literary Contrariety. Jefferson: Macfarland and Company Inc.

Auden, W. H. (1981) The Prolific and the Devourer. Hopewell: Ecco Press.

Blake, William (1990) The Complete Poems. Harmondsworth: Alicia Ostriker editor, Penguin Books.

Chesterton, G. K. (1910) William Blake. London: Duckworth and Co.

Frye, Northrop (1990) Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Frye, Northrop (1990) Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Green, Mathew J. A. (2005) Visionary Materialism in the Early Works of William Blake: The Intersection of Enthusiasm and Empiricism. Basingstoke: Palgrave and Macmillian.

Raine, Kathleen (2002) Blake and Antiquity. New York: Routledge Classics.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (2009) The Major Works. Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill, editors, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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