In "A Vision of the Last Judgment," William Blake states: "The Nature of my Work is Visionary or Imaginative; it is an Endeavor to Restore what the Ancients call'd the Golden Age." Later in "A Vision" the poet names the tools which humanity has for effecting its restoration into that state of incorruptible redemption. He speaks of "Poetry, Painting, and Music, the three Powers in Man of conversing with Paradise, which the flood did not Sweep away." Such archetypal hopes--to restore the Golden Age, to converse with Paradise--are as basic to the pastoral, from Virgil to Robert Frost, as they are to Blake. Blake's use and modifications of that mode are a vehicle for his spiritual, moral, political, and humanitarian goals. The pastoral envisions a world transformed by the imagination into a Golden Age Arcadia of unification and contentment, a New Jerusalem wherein, as Blake states, "Mental Things are alone Real" and man's divinity is at last triumphant. Just how the pastoral would imaginatively transform the world, and how Blake in his artistic vision perceives the emergence of the apocalypse out of our fallen state, are remarkably similar issues. This dissertation presents a more thorough analysis of pastoral elements and aims in Blake's poetry than has been written to date. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 42-06, Section: A, page: 2683. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1981.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74464 |
| Creators | Downes, Margaret Josephine |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 440 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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