Urizen, the protagonist of William Blake’s The [First] Book of Urizen (1794), is a dark character who represents tyranny, suppression, and reason. While Urizen retells events in the form of a book, depicting an unchangeable past, Bruce Dickinson’s song “Gates of Urizen” (The Chemical Wedding, 1998) concentrates on enlightenment and the escape from Urizenic restrictions. Both focus on contrasts—imagination and reason, open space and enclosure, mind and body, mobility and fixture, success and failure. Whereas the separation of contraries Los and Urizen leads to misery and chaos in Urizen, it produces positive results in “Gates”: Dickinson’s adaptation changes the outcome of Urizen and turns the plot into practical advice on how to pass the gates of Urizen. By comparing metaphors of imprisonment and freedom in both texts, such as impaired vision and prophetic sight or the contrast between being earthbound and airborne, I shed light on how “Gates” turns a dystopic mythology into a philosophy of life.
{"title":"“If you want to learn the secrets, close your eyes”: Bruce Dickinson’s “Gates of Urizen” as Contrary Version of The [First] Book of Urizen","authors":"Katharina Hagen","doi":"10.47761/biq.277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.277","url":null,"abstract":"Urizen, the protagonist of William Blake’s The [First] Book of Urizen (1794), is a dark character who represents tyranny, suppression, and reason. While Urizen retells events in the form of a book, depicting an unchangeable past, Bruce Dickinson’s song “Gates of Urizen” (The Chemical Wedding, 1998) concentrates on enlightenment and the escape from Urizenic restrictions. Both focus on contrasts—imagination and reason, open space and enclosure, mind and body, mobility and fixture, success and failure. Whereas the separation of contraries Los and Urizen leads to misery and chaos in Urizen, it produces positive results in “Gates”: Dickinson’s adaptation changes the outcome of Urizen and turns the plot into practical advice on how to pass the gates of Urizen. By comparing metaphors of imprisonment and freedom in both texts, such as impaired vision and prophetic sight or the contrast between being earthbound and airborne, I shed light on how “Gates” turns a dystopic mythology into a philosophy of life.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74506907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"John E. Grant, 1925–2020","authors":"Alexander S. Gourlay","doi":"10.47761/biq.275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.275","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76472527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I argue … that aside from being a central factor in Blake’s revisionist Christian system of the “human form divine,” self-annihilation is a major source of eroticism in his portrayal of unconventional sexual experiences. Self-annihilation as an erotic phenomenon is empowered by the violent alteration of human subjectivity and the dissolution of social and biological preexisting identity. Blake’s designs of Oothoon and Theotormon in Visions exemplify this alternative aspect, as this essay attempts to demonstrate.
{"title":"Violence, Death, and Autoeroticism: The Alternative Self-Annihilation in Visions of the Daughters of Albion","authors":"Kang-po Chen","doi":"10.47761/biq.276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.276","url":null,"abstract":"I argue … that aside from being a central factor in Blake’s revisionist Christian system of the “human form divine,” self-annihilation is a major source of eroticism in his portrayal of unconventional sexual experiences. Self-annihilation as an erotic phenomenon is empowered by the violent alteration of human subjectivity and the dissolution of social and biological preexisting identity. Blake’s designs of Oothoon and Theotormon in Visions exemplify this alternative aspect, as this essay attempts to demonstrate.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79147304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper uses a revised version of the 2011 annotated translation into Brazilian Portuguese by Steil as its base, and discusses the translation of Blake’s prophetic verse and the poem’s processes of phonic harmonization. It starts by analyzing these elements in Milton, then goes on to investigate strategies for a poetic translation into Portuguese.
{"title":"Translating Blake’s Prophetic Poetry: The Case of Milton","authors":"Juliana Steil, Lawrence Flores Pereira","doi":"10.47761/biq.272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.272","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uses a revised version of the 2011 annotated translation into Brazilian Portuguese by Steil as its base, and discusses the translation of Blake’s prophetic verse and the poem’s processes of phonic harmonization. It starts by analyzing these elements in Milton, then goes on to investigate strategies for a poetic translation into Portuguese.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81098614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I have now uncovered what I believe to be the admission paper of Blake’s father for the Freedom of the City of London. It includes new information that seems to validate Bentley’s suspicion that Blake’s grandfather could be identified with James Blake, a timber merchant who died in Ratcliff, Middlesex, in 1754.
{"title":"James Blake of Rotherhithe, Timber Merchant","authors":"Wayne C. Ripley","doi":"10.47761/biq.268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.268","url":null,"abstract":"I have now uncovered what I believe to be the admission paper of Blake’s father for the Freedom of the City of London. It includes new information that seems to validate Bentley’s suspicion that Blake’s grandfather could be identified with James Blake, a timber merchant who died in Ratcliff, Middlesex, in 1754.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89254350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recently, in reviewing two new editions of Blake, I used “Auguries of Innocence” as a test case to assess the explanatory notes provided by the editors. I chose the poem because it seems to me particularly susceptible to—and in need of—intervention of the kind provided by editorial annotation. Each individual augury poses an intellectual problem of some kind. Many are apparently designed to exercise and strengthen the visionary capabilities of the reader, usually depending on a critical unstated fact or idea, but the supplementary information provided in existing editions of this work is sparse and more often occludes than illuminates. I thought it might be useful to some future editors as well as readers to create an “edition” of this poem with explicit versions of every note I could think of, not as a paradigmatic textbook text of the poem (it’s too thorough, though far from exhaustive) but as a resource from which editors could select the information that would be most helpful to their readers.
最近，在评论布莱克的两个新版本时，我用《无辜的预兆》(augures of Innocence)作为测试案例来评估编辑提供的解释性注释。我之所以选择这首诗，是因为在我看来，它似乎特别容易受到——而且需要——编辑注释所提供的那种干预。每一种占卜都提出了某种智力上的问题。许多显然是为了锻炼和加强读者的幻想能力，通常依赖于一个关键的未陈述的事实或想法，但在现有版本中提供的补充信息是稀疏的，而且往往是遮蔽的，而不是阐明的。我认为，对未来的编辑和读者来说，把我能想到的每一个注释都明确地写进这首诗的“版本”可能会很有用，不是作为这首诗的范例教科书(它太彻底了，尽管远非详尽无遗)，而是作为一种资源，编辑可以从中选择对读者最有帮助的信息。
{"title":"An Overannotated “Auguries of Innocence”","authors":"Alexander S. Gourlay","doi":"10.47761/biq.267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.267","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, in reviewing two new editions of Blake, I used “Auguries of Innocence” as a test case to assess the explanatory notes provided by the editors. I chose the poem because it seems to me particularly susceptible to—and in need of—intervention of the kind provided by editorial annotation. Each individual augury poses an intellectual problem of some kind. Many are apparently designed to exercise and strengthen the visionary capabilities of the reader, usually depending on a critical unstated fact or idea, but the supplementary information provided in existing editions of this work is sparse and more often occludes than illuminates. I thought it might be useful to some future editors as well as readers to create an “edition” of this poem with explicit versions of every note I could think of, not as a paradigmatic textbook text of the poem (it’s too thorough, though far from exhaustive) but as a resource from which editors could select the information that would be most helpful to their readers.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"08 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86409818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1805, Blake painted the beautiful, solemn watercolor The Magdalene at the Sepulchre for his friend and patron Thomas Butts. It illustrates a scene from the resurrection narrative in the gospel of John, capturing the moment before Mary recognizes that the figure who appears to her, outside the tomb, is the risen Jesus. The Magdalene at the Sepulchre is a consummate example of Blake’s incarnational aesthetic and a striking visualization of his interpretive approach to scripture. By choosing to illustrate this specific episode from John’s gospel, he invokes the illustrious Noli me tangere tradition while departing from it, or, more accurately, by refusing to enter it at all.
{"title":"Interpreting Blake’s The Magdalene at the Sepulchre","authors":"G. Rosso","doi":"10.47761/biq.269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.269","url":null,"abstract":"In 1805, Blake painted the beautiful, solemn watercolor The Magdalene at the Sepulchre for his friend and patron Thomas Butts. It illustrates a scene from the resurrection narrative in the gospel of John, capturing the moment before Mary recognizes that the figure who appears to her, outside the tomb, is the risen Jesus. The Magdalene at the Sepulchre is a consummate example of Blake’s incarnational aesthetic and a striking visualization of his interpretive approach to scripture. By choosing to illustrate this specific episode from John’s gospel, he invokes the illustrious Noli me tangere tradition while departing from it, or, more accurately, by refusing to enter it at all.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"79 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77792117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maurice Sendak studied Blake’s art and poetry, and collected drawings, watercolors, illuminated books, and prints. In interviews, he frequently professed his adoration of Blake, stating in 2001, “I love Blake; I have all my life.” The experimental synthesis of the verbal and visual in much of Sendak’s work is self-consciously Blakean, a deliberate evocation of the composite art of the illuminated books that is perhaps seen most forcefully in his final work, My Brother’s Book, completed before Sendak’s death in May 2012 but published posthumously. In a much earlier work, a 1967 Christmas keepsake published by Bodley Head, we find Sendak engaging directly with the man whom he described in a 1970 interview as “my teacher in all things.”
{"title":"Sendak and Blake Illustrating “Songs of Innocence” with an Essay by Prof. Robert N. Essick","authors":"Mark Crosby","doi":"10.47761/biq.266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.266","url":null,"abstract":"Maurice Sendak studied Blake’s art and poetry, and collected drawings, watercolors, illuminated books, and prints. In interviews, he frequently professed his adoration of Blake, stating in 2001, “I love Blake; I have all my life.” The experimental synthesis of the verbal and visual in much of Sendak’s work is self-consciously Blakean, a deliberate evocation of the composite art of the illuminated books that is perhaps seen most forcefully in his final work, My Brother’s Book, completed before Sendak’s death in May 2012 but published posthumously. In a much earlier work, a 1967 Christmas keepsake published by Bodley Head, we find Sendak engaging directly with the man whom he described in a 1970 interview as “my teacher in all things.”","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79962116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
2019 was a very active year in Blake studies. In popular discussions, at least, it was dominated by the Tate Britain exhibition, William Blake, curated by Martin Myrone and Amy Concannon. The retrospective boasted over 300 works, making it by far the largest Blake exhibition of the twenty-first century. Its catalogue, which was named one of the twenty-six most beautiful art books of 2019 by the New York Times, articulates the exhibition’s “determinedly historicist and materialist” approach and includes an afterword by Alan Moore, reflecting on Blakean places and his graphic novel From Hell.
{"title":"William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2019","authors":"Wayne C. Ripley","doi":"10.47761/biq.261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.261","url":null,"abstract":"2019 was a very active year in Blake studies. In popular discussions, at least, it was dominated by the Tate Britain exhibition, William Blake, curated by Martin Myrone and Amy Concannon. The retrospective boasted over 300 works, making it by far the largest Blake exhibition of the twenty-first century. Its catalogue, which was named one of the twenty-six most beautiful art books of 2019 by the New York Times, articulates the exhibition’s “determinedly historicist and materialist” approach and includes an afterword by Alan Moore, reflecting on Blakean places and his graphic novel From Hell.","PeriodicalId":39620,"journal":{"name":"Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85458814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：