This thesis examines the use and interpretation of Revelation in the writings of the contemporary prophets Richard Brothers, Joanna Southcott and William Blake. Contributing to an emerging scholarly interest in the reception of biblical texts within marginalised interpretative traditions, the thesis offers a detailed exploration of how Revelation is incorporated into these authors' prophetic texts, and how it informs the identity of readers who see their activities as bringing about the fulfilment of the text's visions on the historical plane. This aim is achieved by engaging with extant comparative studies of Brothers, Southcott and Blake within historical and literary studies; a comparison with similar contemporary prophetic figures and the contribution of Revelation to their prophetic self-understandings; and contextualising these figures against contemporary constructions of Revelation as a prophetic text, and the recognition of the poetic nature of biblical prophecy in the eighteenth century. In particular, the thesis advocates for the continued exploration of "emic" approaches to these figures, a process started by members of Oxford's Prophecy Project. The thesis thus argues that "prophecy", rather than "millenarianism," is the most appropriate way of characterising these authors' scriptural engagement, and explores how prophecy is understood in their writings to delineate commonalities in their understanding of the prophet's role. Finally, it surveys how Revelation is interpreted within the respective works of the writers who are the focus of this thesis. The conclusion offers a hermeneutical reflection on the relationship between the prophetic interpreter and the texts they engage with. It suggests that the reader who claims to be "inspired" faces a tension between offering an interpretation of the authoritative text, and claiming an equivalent level of authority for their own works. The thesis makes three contributions to existing scholarly debates. Firstly, it demonstrates that attention to these three authors' interpretations of Revelation shows how attention to neglected voices illuminates the history of interpretation of this biblical book. Secondly, it justifies comparing these three authors under the framework of "prophecy", rather than the anachronistic terminology of "millenarianism." Thirdly, it explores their readings of Revelation to shed light on how interpretation of a scriptural text such as Revelation is key to the evolution of prophetic vocation; how Revelation’s images are developed and transformed in their own prophetic texts; and finally, their sensitivity to hermeneutical questions raised by Revelation’s relationship to other biblical texts and the problems posed by its eschatology.

The origin of the story of Narcissus is unknown, and the circumstances of his death are uncertain, but the most popular version of the tale as told by Ovid has been read, translated, explained, moralized and disputed by innumerable writers and alluded to by many more. Renaissance writers in England, such as Golding, Edwards and Sandys, were interested in first introducing the myth into their own language and then, in explaining its meanings, lessons and moralizations. Later poets paraphrased their translations, often adding their own point of view or else using only the skeleton structure of the myth for their own poetic purposes. The simple story of a youth who died by a pool after falling hopelessly in love with his own reflection acquired a significance and immortality worthy of a Greek god. The Eighteenth Century writers, who were less interested in the gods than their predecessors had been, almost completely ignored Narcissus in their poetry, but later poets such as Blake, Shelley and Keats revived him once again and transformed the faded youth into a Romantic. In The Book of Thel Blake explores the consequences of self-love, and anticipates the fuller development of this theme in The Four Zoas. He uses the archetypal pattern of the Narcissus myth for portraying the fading Thel, who refuses to enter the state of Generation because she is afraid of the voice of experience that she meets in her own grave when she descends into the underworld. Her sterile separation from her Spectre is similar to the unconsummated relationship between Narcissus and Echo. Thel fleeing from her grave escapes back to non-existence, fading by the river like Narcissus and Echo. An understanding of the function of the Narcissus story in Shelley's poem, Alastor, is indispensable to an interpretation of this controversial poem. Shelley's allusions to the myth are faithful to the Ovidian version of Narcissus as a youth who sighs away his life after seeing his own shadow in a well. Shelley associates the Poet's quest with the Narcissus myth by generally paralleling the narrative structure of Ovid's story, and by employing much of its imagery. Chapter II argues that Shelley's poem is both unified and consistent when it is interpreted in terms of the Narcissus theme. Keats primarily uses the popular myth of Endymion and Cynthia in his poem, Endymion, but also includes other myths in the manner of the Renaissance epyllion. The most significant addition to the main myth is the story of Narcissus as a comment on the nature of Endymion's quest. Keats pictures the hero at the well, viewing the reflection of the vision, in order to establish the specific parallel to Ovid's story. Endymion, however, unlike Narcissus or the Poet in Alastor, recognizes his illusion and proceeds towards accepting his responsibility to his kingdom and to the Echo figures in the poem. The analysis concludes with a comparison of the specific handling of the Narcissus myth in the three poems in terms of the various versions of the myth, the treatment of the metamorphosis of Narcissus Into a flower, and the development of the theme of self-love. The thesis establishes the significance of the Narcissus myth in The Book of Thel, Alastor and Endymion, and evaluates Blake's, Shelley's and Keats's contribution to the attempts of the Renaissance writers to introduce the Ovidian story into English literature. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study analyses readings and interpretations of the satanic figure in John Milton´s epic Paradise Lost. The study highlights positions from the literature debate about Satan, the main character, and analyses interpretations of Milton´s Satan in order to investigate the critical positions about the relation between text and interpretation. The study has a meta-perspective and analyses the character of Satan in relation to the two main positions that have occupied the debate. The central question for this study is the role of the satanic figure in Paradise Lost. Have the critics read him as a tragic hero or is he being portrayed as the embodiment of evil? By reading which strategies have been used for interpretation by critics in order to come to conclusions about Satan, I have also shown what views exist concerning literary texts and character presentation. The result shows two clear traditions, satanists and anti-satanists, the former interpreting Satan as a positive character and the latter viewing him as a negative one. This study has shown that the debate concerning Satan has touched upon a wide spectrum of subjects where questions concerning authority, revolt and the closeness/distance to a text has been part of the interpretations. The satanic figure has at the same time shown to be an ambivalent 'round' character which makes simple interpretations of him more difficult.

In this study the author compares the broad outlines of Blake's and Dickinson's thought, pointing out evidence of decisive Biblical influence not only on the content of their thought but on their attitude toward language as well. the author argues that both poets assumed the philosophical position of Job as they interpreted the Bible independently and as they explored many dimensions of experience in the fallen world. The author represents their thought not as a fixed system but as a faith-based pattern of Christian/Platonic questing for truth.

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This book is about the participatory aesthetics of the fantastic. In it, the author argues that the definition of the fantastic presented by Tzvetan Todorov in 1970 can be used, provided it is first adapted to a media-ecological framework, to theorize the role of aesthetic participation in the creation of secondary worlds. Working within a hermeneutical tradition, Todorov understands reader participation as interpretation, in which the creative ambiguities of the literary object are primarily epistemological. However, it is here argued that the aesthetic object of the fantastic is also characterized by material ambiguity. The purpose of this dissertation is then to present a conceptual framework with which to theorize the relation between the material and the epistemological ambiguity of the fantastic. It is argued that such a framework can be found in an ecological understanding of aesthetic participation. This, in turn, entails understanding human subjectivity as a process always already embodied in a material environment. To this extent, the proposed theoretical framework questions the clear and oppositional distinction between form and matter, as well as that between mind and body, nature and culture, and human and non-human, on which a modern and humanist notion of subjectivity is based. And in this sense, the basic ecological assumptions of this dissertation are posthumanist, or non-humanist. From this position, it is argued that an ecological understanding of participation offers a means to reformulate the function of a number of concepts central to studying the aesthetics of the fantastic, most notably the concepts of media, genre and text. As the fantastic focuses on the creation of other worlds, it is an aesthetics of coming into being, of ontogenesis. Accordingly, it will be argued that the participatory aesthetics of the fantastic operationalizes the ontogenesis of media, genres and texts. By mapping the ontogenesis of three distinct media ecologies – the media ecology of fantasy and J. R. R. Tolkien’s secondary world Middle-earth; the media ecology of the American comic book superhero Miracleman; and the media ecology of William Blake – this book argues that the ecological imagination generates world. Per Israelson has been a doctoral candidate in the Research School of Studies in Cultural History at the department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University. Ecologies of the Imagination is his dissertation.

Tesis para optar al grado de Doctor en Literatura Hispanoamericana y Chilena / Como es sabido y Borges (1899-1986) mismo lo señala, pasó su niñez “detrás de una verja con lanzas, y en una biblioteca de ilimitados libros ingleses. Palermo del cuchillo y de la guitarra andaba (me aseguran) por las esquinas” Esta pequeña cita instala una problemática no menor en su obra y que contiene la relación siempre en tensión entre Latinoamérica (periferia) y Europa (centro). La investigación examina especialmente el diálogo interdiscursivo e intercultural entre Borges y dos románticos ingleses: William Blake (1757-1827) y John Keats (1795-1821) a través de la desterritorialización de Tyger y Nightingale del contexto romántico inglés decimonónico y su reterritorialización en la Argentina borgeana moderna / postmoderna del siglo XX. Metodológicamente, se ha realizado un análisis del poema “The Tyger” de Blake y del poema “Ode to a Nightingale” de Keats para dilucidar su significación o significaciones románticas. Posteriormente se ha examinado la obra ensayística, cuentística, lírica de Borges en búsqueda de los significados que él atribuye a tyger y nightingale descubriéndose una polisemia compleja otorgada por sus acercamientos serios o jocosos. En otras palabras, Borges desestabiliza la relación significante /significado de tyger y nightingale y su contexto romántico. Tanto tyger como nightingale diseminan rizomáticamente por la obra de Borges a través de los principios de conexión y heterogeneidad que permiten unirlos a nuevos significados diversos sin que se llegue jamás a un significado definitivo. Borges instalaría una postergación infinita del significado que asemeja un deslizamiento, un rodar, un nomadismo con múltiples entradas y salidas entre los discursos involucrados. (Kristeva, 1980; Derrida, 1975; Deleuze/Guattari, 1997; Barthes, 1974). Aunque la investigación se encuentra aún en progreso, la recodificación que hace Borges de los significantes románticos ingleses tyger y nightingale parece tener importantes implicancias desde la perspectiva del postcolonialismo, ya que el juego literario conducido por Borges establece una relación de paridad con el centro que cuestiona la sujeción periférica de América Latina al centro Europeo.

O objetivo geral desta dissertação é interpretar o corpo enquanto instância semântica no poema O Casamento do Céu e do Inferno (1790), do poeta inglês William Blake. Sustenta-se que uma semântica profunda de TMHH instaura uma forma ativa, integrada e franca de viver. Investigaremos a concepção de corpo presente do poema a fim de validar a hipótese de que é possível ter a vida transformada pela leitura de um texto altamente poético. Essa transformação, em última instância, é uma consequência da apropriação do texto pelo leitor. Tal apropriação se dá não só pela via mental, mas de fato pela incorporação do texto literário. O trabalho será realizado com base na hermenêutica de Paul Ricoeur, especialmente na dialética da conjectura e da validação. Já o livro de artista, ramo da arte conceitual do qual Blake é visto como um dos precursores, será apresentado enquanto performance e demonstração dos sentidos de corporeidade vislumbrados pela presente interpretação do poema. Em termos de embodiment, o papel da gravura em metal do processo criativo completo de Blake abre-nos possibilidades para um amplo horizonte de metáforas relacionadas às especificidades dessa técnica quando em articulação com o poema. / The general objective of this dissertation is to interpret the body as a semantic instance in the poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), from English poet William Blake. It holds that the depth semantics of TMHH establishes an active, integrated, and franc way of living. We will investigate the conception of a present ‘body’ of the poem to validate the hypothesis that it is possible to have lives transformed by the reading of a highly poetic text. This transformation is ultimately a consequence of the appropriation of the text by the reader. Such appropriation is not only mental, but it takes place in the incorporation, or embodiment, of the literary text. The work will be based on Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, especially the dialectics of guess and validation. The artist’s book, a field of conceptual art of which Blake is seen as precursor, will be presented as performance and demonstration of the senses of corporeality foreseen in this interpretation of the poem. In terms of embodiment, the role of engraving in Blake’s complete creative process opens to a wild horizon of metaphors concerning the specificities of this art in relation to the poem.

This thesis seeks to explicate, and develop an appropriate method for the elucidation of, the antecedents to the theology of William Blake in the writings of the seventeenth-century divine, Peter Sterry (1613-1672). While the radical religious scene of the English Revolution has long been recognised as offering important antecedents to Blake's thought, Sterry is a figure who has largely been overlooked. The exception to this is an essay, published in 1929, in which Vivian de Sola Pinto asserted the existence of 'startling affinities' between their ideas. Pinto's study was, however, limited by its failure to consider, firstly, the implications of its findings for our general understanding of the antecedents to Blake's thought in the seventeenth century and, secondly, the insight Sterry's writings may be able to offer into Blake's theological vision. These are the very questions at the heart of this dissertation. By addressing them, it seeks to shed new light on the nature of Blake's theology and its anticipations in earlier English thought. Given the lack of evidence that Blake read Sterry, and the limited effectiveness of the 'genealogical' method when it comes to Blake, it pioneers a bespoke 'analogical' method for the exploration of these issues. It proposes that Sterry is actually closer to the intellectual milieu of Commonwealth radicalism than one might expect and that his writings function effectively as a lens through which it is possible to discern how Blake consistently uses 'dualistic' language and imagery in an ethical and epistemological sense. The first finding suggests that the established view of the radical religious environment in Blake studies needs to be extended; the second challenges the widespread perception that Blake's thought is ultimately dualistic in an ontological sense, thus contributing to the elucidation of a perennial problem for Blake scholarship. Together, they underline Sterry's importance as a neglected theological precursor to the thought of William Blake.

A defining feature of American abstract expressionist painting is its enormous size and scale. Heroic ambition, the vast American landscape, and the sense of "something big" happening in American painting are often cited as determining factors in this phenomenon. This dissertation examines how Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko not only painted large-scale canvases but, following trends in modern architecture, shifted their painting towards the construction of architectural environments, thus promoting the transformation of painting from a window in the wall to a wall without a window. The artist and architect Tony Smith, a close friend and colleague of these painters, played an active role in encouraging their interest in modern architecture. As a result of their investigations into the physical, as well as conceptual, limits of the canvas, these artists shifted the viewer’s experience from a perceptual experience of pictorial space to a physical encounter with actual space. In contradiction to the notion of the purely optical, one could describe this as a somatic viewing experience, tactile and active, which anticipated specific concerns of 1960s minimalism. This achievement redefines Pollock's, Newman's, and Rothko's legacy to the subsequent generation of artists and places their production into a broader historical framework. / text