Inaug.-diss. -- Strassburg. / Bibliography: p.iv.

by Charles H. Fine, Robert M. Freund. / Bibliography: p. [49]-[50].

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Thesis (M.A. (Masters by dissertation))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2012. / This study is concerned with the relationship between images and poetry in the early illuminated books of William Blake. It seeks to explore the generative production of meaning which arises from the interaction of these different aesthetic modalities. Such meanings are investigated through the notion of a “Third Text”, which has been adapted from the thought of Stephen Behrendt (“‘Something in my Eye’: Irritants in Blake’s Illuminated Texts”). The Third Text arises from the interaction of images and texts, but is identical to neither alone, nor is it constituted by the sum of the contributing parts. The interactions of image and text are further elucidated through the application of selected poststructuralist theories, drawn from the writing of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. Notions of the Text, différance, the supplement and spectrality are central to the argument. An interaction is established between Blake’s illuminated books and the chosen poststructuralist constructs in order to recognise the singularity of the verbal and visual material considered. An interrelated component of this study is a reflection on the ways in which Blake breaks the conceptual frames of image and text in his illuminated books, thus challenging a range of established models. Particular attention is paid to the early illuminated books, Songs of Innocence and of Experience and America a Prophecy. Key concerns of this study include the ways in which Songs challenges the boundaries between innocence and experience and the exploration of prophetic vision in America. The dissertation concludes by emphasising the importance of preserving an infinite relation of image to text, both in Blake studies and more broadly in the analysis of image-text

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Blake's writings were explored as a refutation of Newton and Locke, and thereby positivism and atomistic psychology, leading to a renovation of the sensual body and the imagination. The form of Blake's work, the Illuminated Manuscript, is examined for the relationship between image and text in the prophetic mode, and for its investigations of the copy within a typographic culture. In the last Chapter, Blake's prophetic poem Jerusalem unveils his conception of the Spiritual Fourfold as the restitution of an ornamental universe and the 'building' of the Heavenly City on earth.

Visual art and written text have been described as historical sisters, linguistic twins and warlike enemies. These attempts to exclusively define the capabilities of each medium are inherently limited, contradictory and inaccurate. A better understanding of their individual capability and cooperative possibility can be achieved by examining the ways in which each functions in relation to the other on the composite page. William Blake's designs provide an excellent arena in which the functional interaction between the arts can be observed. Blake's visual additions to the poetry of Thomas Gray, Robert Blair and Edward Young demonstrate that the visual image is capable of interrupting the stability of exclusive textual meaning. However, this does not undermine the capability of either medium to assert meaningful possibility. Rather, the excess of Blake's visual imagery amidst another's poetic page produces a pluralisation of media and representative potential that avoids the extremes of hierarchical definition and all-inclusive meaninglessness. In contrast, Blake's own composites feature visual art and textual expression that both contribute to an overall evasion of definitive interpretation. However, their unpredictable interrelations and inconsistencies amplify and distort one another on the composite page, sustaining a relationship that is neither exclusively harmonic nor discordant. Thus, the non-synthetic "marriage" of contrary states that provides the subject matter of the Songs and the Marriage is also an accurate model for the overall relationship between visual art and text in Blake's designs. A consideration of historical context reveals the contradictory currents that direct and antagonise Blake's designs and suggests that the perception of the relationship between the "Sister Arts" often depends on such temporal conditions. While acknowledging the limitations imposed by historical circumstance, this study also recognises that late eighteenth-century uncertainties encourage innovative reconceptualisations of composite interaction. In both form and content, Blake's designs contain yet contend with a variety of perspectives, and are invaluable examples of the individual and interactive plenitude that visual art and text are capable of. Overall, Blake's work highlights the unique role that the multi-media space plays in creative and critical efforts to understand the functional capability of each representative medium.

William Blake, in The Four Zoas, uses the human body as a metaphor to describe stages in the fall, transformation, and approach toward Apocalypse of the "Universal Man" later called the giant Albion. Biomedical imagery depicting distortion and displacement of body parts or functions is an important aspect of this metaphor. Of particular interest to this thesis are images of division, augmentation, encasement, eruption, and reunion in the poem, The Four Zoas, with some emphasis on the Spectre of Urthona as a divisive form of Los. This Spectre's role is of fundamental importance in Blake's myth for the achievement of reintegration of fallen Albion. Blake's use of the words, "Eternity," "vision," "Imagination," "emanation," "Spectre," "shadow," are examined in some of his other works as an aid for explication of his myth as is the way in which Blake uses metaphor and modulating symbol to give us a richer and hence a clearer vision of the events relating to the Fall and Apocalypse. Morphological imagery illustrating the Fall and sparagmos of the God-Man Albion is described as a distortion of both bodily organs and faculties, i.e. psychic states. The manner in which Blake uses this imagery suggests a movement from a healthy state of expanded vision to a diseased state in which man's powers of perception are dulled or extinguished. This change in Albion from a state of intense creativity in Eden to a state of chaotic passivity in the fallen world is a change from wakefulness to sleep. This sleep produced the dream-nightmare state described in The Four Zoas. Blake's dramatis personae emerge as symbolic counters and in their symbolic method of narration they reveal how error must be given form in order to eliminate it. An analogy is drawn between the symbolic Fall, movement toward Apocalypse, and a pseudo cancerous growth that originates by cellular division, spreads by augmentation, coalesces into encasement but finally erupts with explosive force thus reordering the elements into a healthy holistic gestalt. Similarities between Blake's elimination of mind-body dichotomy in his mythic vision of man and F. S. Perls' concept of an organismic whole which creates reintegration of diseased faculties are explored at some length. The Phoenix-like quality of the contradictory affiliation between blood and water predominant in The Four Zoas is compared to the physiological response in living cells to these potentially destructive and restorative elements. The imagery Blake uses illustrates his doctrine of contraries. The Urizen - Ore cycles are touched upon, as is the providential Luvah - Jesus principle which aids Los in his mission of reversing the effects of the Fall. The importance of Los's Spectre, the Spectre of Urthona, in this movement toward Apocalypse is elaborated upon. The outcome of the struggle between the contrary states of Los and the Spectre of Urthona will be the determinant in this movement. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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