Blake S Jerusalem As Visionary Theatre

Author : Susanne M. Sklar
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2011-10-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780191619144

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Blake's 'Jerusalem' As Visionary Theatre by Susanne M. Sklar Pdf

Before etching Jerusalem William Blake wrote about creating 'the grandest poem that this world contains.' Blake's avowed intention in constructing the work was to move readers from a solely rational way of being (called Ulro) to one that is highly imaginative (called Eden/Eternity), with each word chosen to suit 'the mouth of a true Orator.' Rational interpretation is of limited use when reading this multifaceted epic and its non-linear structure presents a perennial challenge for readers. Susanne Sklar engages with the interpretive challenges of Jerusalem by considering it as a piece of visionary theatre —an imaginative performance in which characters, settings, and imagery are not confined by mundane space and time— allowing readers to find coherence within its complexities. With his characters, Blake's readers can participate imaginatively in what Blake calls 'the Divine Body, the Saviour's Kingdom,' a way of being in which all things interconnect: spiritually, ecologically, socially, and erotically. Imaginatively engaging with Jerusalem involves close textual reading and analysis. The first part of this book discusses the notion of visionary theatre, and the theological, literary, and historical antecedents of Jerusalem's imagery, characters, and settings. Particular attention is paid to the theological context of Blake's Jesus ('the Divine Body'), and Jerusalem, the heroine of his poem. This prepares the ground for a scene-by-scene commentary of the entire illuminated work. Jerusalem tells the story of Albion's fall, many rescue attempts, escalating violence and oppression, and a surprising apocalypse —in which all living things, awakening, are transfigured in ferocious forgiveness.

Author : Susanne M. Sklar
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2011-10-20
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780199603145

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Blake's 'Jerusalem' As Visionary Theatre by Susanne M. Sklar Pdf

Susanne Sklar engages with the interpretive challenges of William Blake's illuminated epic poem Jerusalem by considering it as a piece of visionary theatre - an imaginative performance in which characters, settings, and imagery are not confined by mundane space and time - allowing readers to find coherence within its complexities.

Author : Naomi Billingsley
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2018-05-10
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781838609658

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The Visionary Art of William Blake by Naomi Billingsley Pdf

William Blake (1757-1827) is considered one of the most singular and brilliant talents that England has ever produced. Celebrated now for the originality of his thinking, painting and verse, he shocked contemporaries by rejecting all forms of organized worship even while adhering to the truth of the Bible. But how did he come to equate Christianity with art? How did he use images and paint to express those radical and prophetic ideas about religion which he came in time to believe? And why did he conceive of Christ himself as an artist: in fact, as the artist, par excellence? These are among the questions which Naomi Billingsley explores in her subtle and wide-ranging new study in art, religion and the history of ideas. Suggesting that Blake expresses through his representations of Jesus a truly distinctive theology of art, and offering detailed readings of Blake's paintings and biblical commentary, she argues that her subject thought of Christ as an artist-archetype. Blake's is thus a distinctively 'Romantic' vision of art in which both the artist and his saviour fundamentally change the way that the world is perceived.

Author : David Whitmarsh-Knight
Publisher : CreateSpace
Page : 616 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1434821013

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William Blake's "Jerusalem" Explained by David Whitmarsh-Knight Pdf

William Blakes Jerusalem Explained is the first line by line analysis of this major epic, his plot and mythic unity are detailed and the golden string of the plot clearly expressed so the parts are in context an aesthetic whole. Thereby, his epic is seen as an aesthetic masterpiece. Dr Whitmarsh-Knights scholarship means Jerusalem should no longer be presented as fractal, plotless, impenetrable or as confused. In his recommendations for the companion book on William Blakes The Four Zoas by Dr Whitmarsh-Knight, Emeritus Professor Frederick Cogswell wrote that his scholarship is a: remarkable contribution, a major breakthrough that challenges the views of some greats in the field, a significant contribution to knowledge and eminently worthy of publication. Blakes genius for conscious plot construction and chronological narrative design in Jerusalem can be clearly followed on a scholarly readable line by line basis. Now his genius is accessible to the visionary imagination of the reader.

Author : Diane Piccitto
Publisher : Springer
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2014-06-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781137378019

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Blake's Drama by Diane Piccitto Pdf

Blake's Drama challenges conventional views of William Blake's multimedia work by reinterpreting it as theatrical performance. Viewed in its dramatic contexts, this art form is shown to provoke an active spectatorship and to depict identity as paradoxically essential and constructed, revealing Blake's investments in drama, action, and the body.

Author : Matthew Mauger
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2023-10-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783031377235

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William Blake and the Visionary Law by Matthew Mauger Pdf

This book examines the difficult relationship between individual intellectual freedom and the legal structures which govern human societies in William Blake’s works, showing that this tension carries a political urgency that has not yet been recognised by scholars in the field. In doing so, it offers a new approach to Blake’s corpus that builds on the literary and cultural historical work of recent decades. Blake’s pronouncements about law may often sound biblical in tone; but this book argues that they directly address (and are informed by) eighteenth-century legal debates concerning the origin of the English common law, the autonomy of the judicature, the increasing legislative role of Parliament, and the emergence of the notions of constitutionalism and natural rights. Through a study of his illuminated books, manuscript works, notebook drafts and annotations, this study considers Blake’s understanding that law is both integral to humanity itself and a core component of its potential fulfilment of the ‘Human Form Divine’.

Author : Sheila A. Spector
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2020-05-04
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781351108416

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The Evolution of Blake’s Myth by Sheila A. Spector Pdf

Interpreting Blake has always proved challenging. Hermeneutics, as the on-going negotiation between the horizon of expectations and a given text, hinges on the preconceptions that structure thought. The structure, in turn, is derived from myth, a cultural narrative predicated on a particular set of foundational principles, and organized in terms of the resulting symbolic form. The primary impediment to interpreting Blake has been the failure to recognize that he and much of his audience have thought in terms of two radically different myths. In The Evolution of Blake’s Myth, Sheila A. Spector establishes the dimensions of the myth that structures Blake’s thought. In the first of three parts, she uses Jerusalem, Blake’s most complete book, as the basis for extrapolating the components of the consolidated myth. She then traces the chronological development of the myth from its origin in the late 1780s through its crystallization in Milton. Finally, she demonstrates how Blake used the myth hermeneutically, as the horizon of expectations for interpreting not only his own work, but the Bible and the visionary texts of others, as well.

Author : Christopher Rowland
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2017-08-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781786732385

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Radical Prophet by Christopher Rowland Pdf

Christianity began with the conviction that the old order was finished. The mysterious, elusive and charismatic figure of Jesus proclaimed that a new era, the Kingdom of God, was dawning. Yet despite its success, and the conversion of the empire which had executed its founder, the religion he inspired was soon domesticated, its counter-cultural radicalism tamed, as the Church attempted to control both its doctrines and its followers. Christopher Rowland here shows that this was never the whole story. At the margins, around the edges, sometimes off the religious map, the apocalyptic flame of the New Testament continued to burn. In 1649 the Diggers occupied St George's Hill to put the egalitarianism of Christ into practice. 'You must break these men or they will break you', Oliver Cromwell declared of the 'lunaticks'. This book argues that such revolutionaries had divined the true intent of the enigma who threw over the tables of the money-changers: to summon a new epoch - strange, iconoclastic, uncomfortable and otherworldly. It gives full weight to a remarkable strain of radical religion that simply refuses to die.

Author : William Blake
Publisher : DigiCat
Page : 381 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2023-12-24
Category : Art
ISBN : EAN:8596547763239

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JERUSALEM by William Blake Pdf

The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during the unknown years of Jesus. The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian Church in general, and the English Church in particular, has long used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace. In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake implies that a visit by Jesus would briefly create heaven in England, in contrast to the "dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution. Blake's poem asks questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christ's visit. Thus the poem merely implies that there may, or may not, have been a divine visit, when there was briefly heaven in England. 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.

Author : Helen P Bruder
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2015-10-06
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781317321163

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Blake, Gender and Culture by Helen P Bruder Pdf

Blake's combination of verse and design invites interdisciplinary study. The essays in this collection approach his work from a variety of perspectives including masculinity, performance, plant biology, empire, politics and sexuality.

Author : Diane Piccitto,Terry F. Robinson
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 397 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2023-05-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780472132881

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The Visual Life of Romantic Theater, 1780-1830 by Diane Piccitto,Terry F. Robinson Pdf

Provides fresh perspectives on the Romantic era through a focus on the visual nature and impact of the stage

Author : Tobias Churton
Publisher : Watkins Media Limited
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2015-04-28
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781780287881

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Jerusalem! by Tobias Churton Pdf

‘Truly astonishing in its detail … this must be one of the most illuminating and enlightening biographies to date.’ Michael Eavis cbe, Founder of the Glastonbury Festival A brilliant new biography of the mystic poet and artist William Blake – and the first to explore his startlingly original quest for spiritual truth, as well as the profound lessons he has for us all today. The hymn ‘Jerusalem’, with its famous words by William Blake, stirs our hearts with its evocation of a new holy city built in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. However, until now, the spiritual essence of William Blake has been buried under myriad inadequate biographies, college dissertations and arts commentaries, written by people who have missed the luminescent keys to Blake’s symbolism and liberating spirit. Any attempt to uncover the ‘real’ Blake is thwarted by his status as a legend or ‘national treasure’. In Jerusalem! Tobias Churton expertly takes you beyond this superficial façade, showing you Blake the esoteric genius – a myth-maker, brilliantly using symbols and theology to express his unique insights into the nature of body, mind and spirit. Churton is not only deeply knowledgeable about Blake’s life and times, but also uses his shared values with Blake to enter into his labyrinth of thought and feeling. Challenging the conventional views of Blake as either a ‘romantic poet’ or a rebel with ideas about free sex, Tobias Churton’s startling new biography reveals, at last, the real William Blake in all his glory, so that anyone who sings ‘Jerusalem’ in future will see its beauty with renewed understanding. With access to a large body of never-before-published records – letters, diaries, pamphlets and books – Tobias Churton casts unprecedented light and perspective on William Blake’s life and times. Blake’s writing – heartfelt, vivid and profound – accounts for his status as one of the best-loved poets writing in English. Americans need no reminding that Blake inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson and American visionary Walt Whitman. Yet he spent the larger part of his creative career being ridiculed and suppressed. In Jerusalem! Churton conjures a superb portrait of Blake’s London, and in particular the rivalries of the cultural community in which the poet-artist was often misunderstood. He argues that Blake believed Man does not ‘belong’ to society; rather,we are all members of the Divine Body, co-existent with God. He was concerned with a total spiritual revival – what had gone wrong with Man, and how to put it right. Blake’s message has proved to be as challenging to today’s readers as it was to his contemporaries. Blake perceived, so far ahead of his time, that the philosophy of materialism would dominate the world – a culture from which we now yearn to break free. Jerusalem! is unashamedly ambitious in its scope and objective. Churton ends once and for all the persistent notion of Blake as a startling peculiarity, whilst emancipating him from the labels of ‘Romantic poet’ or ‘national treasure’. Even if it means sacrificing some cherished illusions or uncovering a few painful surprises, this compelling biography reveals, for the first time, the true spirit of William Blake.

Author : Lucy Cogan
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2021-05-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783030676889

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Blake and the Failure of Prophecy by Lucy Cogan Pdf

This monograph reorients discussion of Blake’s prophetic mode, revealing it to be not a system in any formal sense, but a dynamic, human response to an era of momentous historical change when the future Blake had foreseen and the reality he was faced with could not be reconciled. At every stage, Blake’s writing confronts the central problem of all politically minded literature: how texts can become action. Yet he presents us with no single or, indeed, conclusive answer to this question and in this sense it can be said that he fails. Blake, however, never stopped searching for a way that prophecy might be made to live up to its promise in the present. The twentieth-century hermeneuticist Paul Ricoeur shared with Blake a preoccupation with the relationship between time, text and action. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics thus provide a fresh theoretical framework through which to analyse Blake’s attempts to fulfil his prophetic purpose.

Author : Mark S. Burrows,Hilary Davies,Josephine von Zitzewitz
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2020-09-28
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781000194678

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Prophetic Witness and the Reimagining of the World by Mark S. Burrows,Hilary Davies,Josephine von Zitzewitz Pdf

This book explores the prophetic characteristics of literature, particularly poetry, that seek to reimagine the world in which it is written. Using theological and philosophical insights it charts the relentless impulse of literature to propose alternative visions, practicable or utopian, and point toward possibilities of renewal and change. Drawing from each of the three main Abrahamic religions, as well as Greek and Latin classics, an international group of scholars utilise a diverse range of analytical and interpretive methods to draw out the prophetic voice in poetry. Looking at the writings of figures like T. S. Elliot, Blake, Wittgenstein and Isaiah, the theme of the prophetic is shown to be of timely importance given the current state of geo-political challenges and uncertainties and offers a much-needed critical discussion of these broad cultural questions. This collection of essays offers readers an insight into the constructive power of literature. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars working in Religion and the Arts, Religious Studies, Theology and Aesthetics.

Author : John B. Beer
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 460 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 1969
Category : Visions in art
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

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Blake's Visionary Universe by John B. Beer Pdf