Blake and the CityBucknell University Press, 2006 - 235 pages Though usually classified as a Romantic, Blake subverts and dissolves the binaries on which Romanticism turns: self and other, art and nature, country and city. Rather than reject the city outright like many of his contemporaries, Blake embraces it as the intricate workshop of human imagination. Each chapter of this book focuses on a specific text of Blake's that illustrates a particular conception of metaphorical embodiment of the city. These shifting metaphors emphasize the construction of all human environments and the need for imaginative labor to build and interpret them. This study seeks to bridge a gap between transcendent and historicist readings of Blake while at the same time challenging assumptions that still color our view of the city in the twenty-first century. Jennifer Davis Michael is Associate Professor of English at the University of the South. |
Contents
38 | |
Prophetic Labor and Creation of Space Lambeth and The Four Zoas | 75 |
The City as Body Milton | 113 |
The City as Text Jerusalem | 158 |
Notes | 200 |
216 | |
228 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Albion appears artistic becomes begins Blake body building built called chapter city's comes construction created creation culture dark death defined describes Earth Emanation Enitharmon environment Eternity existence experience face fact fall fields Four Zoas frame functions garden gates give golden Golgonooza hand heaven houses human idea ideal imagination Innocence Jerusalem John labor land landscape limited lines live London lyric material means metaphor Milton mind nature Night offers organic particular pastoral physical plate poem poet poetry points political present Press printed prophetic puts reader refer represents Romantic ruins rural seems seen sense separate shape social society Songs soul space Stone streets structure suggests takes Tharmas things tion turn University urban Urizen Vala vision walking walls whole Wordsworth writing
Popular passages
Page 46 - HOLY THURSDAY. Is this a holy thing to see In a rich and fruitful land, — Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak and bare, And their ways are filled with thorns, It is eternal winter there.
Page 15 - COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE EARTH has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river...