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.

Accompanying materials housed with archival copy. / This project focuses on the prosody of three major poets, William Blake, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot. It explores the relationship between each poet's poetic sound structures and his spiritual aims. The project argues that in Blake's prophetic poems The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem, in Yeats's middle and late poetry, and in Eliot's post-conversion poetry, the careful structuring of the non-semantic features of language serves to model a process through which one may arrive at the threshold of a spiritual reality. / The introductory chapter situates these poets' works within the genre of mystical writing; establishes the epistemological nature of poetic sound and its relationship to mystical expression; considers the historical and personal exigencies that influence each poet's prosodic choices; and outlines the prosodic method by which their poetry is scanned. Chapter one addresses William Blake's efforts to re-vision Milton's Christian epic Paradise Lost by means of a logaoedic prosody intended to move the reader from a rational to a spiritual perception of the self and the world. Chapter two considers the development of W.B. Yeats's contrapuntal prosody as integral to his attempt to make of himself a modern poet and to his antithetical mystical philosophy. Chapter three explores the liminal prosody of T. S. Eliot by which he creates an incantatory movement that points to a spiritual reality behind material reality. The project concludes with a consideration of the spiritual aims of Gerard Manley Hopkins and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and posits a revaluation of Hopkins' sprung rhythm and H.D.'s revisionary chain of sound as prosodic practices intrinsic to their spiritual aims.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of English, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

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.

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 dissertation examines the philosophical and spiritual beliefs that underpin William Blake’s account of the imagination, his objections to empiricism and his understanding of poetic language. It begins by considering these beliefs in relation to the idealist principles of George Berkeley as a means of illustrating Blake’s own objections to the empiricism of John Locke. The philosophies of Locke and Berkeley were popular in Blake’s society and their philosophical positions were well known to him. Blake and Berkeley are aligned against Locke’s belief in an objective world composed of matter, and his theory of abstract ideas. Both reject Locke’s principles by affirming the primacy of the perceiving subject. However, Blake disagrees with Berkeley’s theologically traditional understanding of God. He views perception as an act of artistic creation and believes that spiritual divinity is contained within and is intrinsic to man’s human form. This account of human perception as the creative act of an immanent divinity is further elucidated through a comparison with the twentieth-century existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty examines human experience as the functioning of an embodied consciousness in a shared life-world. While Merleau-Ponty does not make any reference to a spiritual deity, his understanding of experience offers a link between Berkeley’s criticisms of Locke and Blake’s own objections to empiricism. Through a comparative examination of Blake and Merleau-Ponty, the imagination is revealed to be the creative or formative consciousness that proceeds from the integrated mind-body complex of the “Divine Body” or “human form divine”. This embodied existence locates the perceiving self in a dynamic physical landscape that is shared with other embodied consciousnesses. It is this communal or intersubjective interaction between self and other that constitutes the experienced world. Merleau-Ponty’s account of the chiasm and his notion of flesh, discussed in The Visible and the Invisible, are applied to Blake in order to elucidate his belief in poetic vision and the constitutive power of language. The form and function of language are compared with that of the body, because both bring the individual experience of a perceiving subject into being in the world and facilitate the reciprocal exchange between the self and other. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that Blake characterises the body and language as the living media of the imagination, which facilitate a creative exchange between a perceiving self and a shared life-world.

Accompanying materials housed with archival copy.

This thesis is a study of the presentation of the orphan child in eighteenth and early nineteenth century English literature, and focuses on William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. It is concerned with assessing the extent to which the orphan children in each of the works are liberated from familial and social constraints and structures and to what end. Chapter One examines the major thematic concern of the extent to which the motif of the orphan child represents a wronged innocent, and whether this symbol can also, or alternatively, be presented as a revolutionary force that challenges society's status quo in Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. Chapter Two considers the significance of the child "lost" and "found", which forms the explicit subject of six of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience and explores the treatment of these conditions, and their differences and consequences for the children concerned. Chapter Three focuses on Charlotte Bronte's depiction of the orphan in Jane Eyre, which presents two models of the orphan child: the protagonist Jane, and Helen Burns. The chapter examines these two models and their responses to orphan-hood in a hostile world where orphans are mistreated by family and society alike. Chapter Four determines whether the orphan constitutes a subversive threat to the family in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and also explores the notion that, although orphan-hood often entails liberation from adult guardians, it also comprises vulnerability and exposure. The thesis concludes by considering the extent to which orphan-hood can involve a form of liberation from the confines of social structures, and what this liberation constitutes for each of the three authors.

This study is a consideration of the notion of the artist as a visionary. This perception of the artist is explored in relation to the work and ideas of three twentieth century artists; the American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1952), the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1983) and the South African artist Jackson Hlungwani (1918 -). The work and ideas of these artists is discussed primarily in terms of the similarities and differences between their art and ideas and those encountered in traditional shamanism and the visionary aspects of Romantic and Gothic art and culture as represented by the work and ideas of eighteenth century English poet and painter William Blake (1757-1827). Each of the twentieth century artists who are considered represents a different strain of the idea of the artist as a visionary. Pollock is discussed in terms of his implicit identification with the artist-shaman. This identification is revealed by the influence Jung's writings and Native American (Indian) art and culture had on his work. Beuys is considered in relation to his explicit adoption of a shaman-like persona. Hlungwani is a practising healer in a traditional community whose art explores an apocalyptic vision of redemption. The comparisons between the artists under investigation and the visionary aspects of traditional shamanism and Gothic and Romantic culture entail an analysis of pictorial elements, subject matter and content in the work of these artists. The intention was to explore those properties in the work and ideas of these artists which correspond to the notion of the artist as a visionary. / Thesis (M.A.F.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1996.