Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William BlakeThis brilliant outline of Blake's thought and commentary on his poetry comes on the crest of the current interest in Blake, and carries us further towards an understanding of his work than any previous study. Here is a dear and complete solution to the riddles of the longer poems, the so-called "Prophecies," and a demonstration of Blake's insight that will amaze the modern reader. The first section of the book shows how Blake arrived at a theory of knowledge that was also, for him, a theory of religion, of human life and of art, and how this rigorously defined system of ideas found expression in the complicated but consistent symbolism of his poetry. The second and third parts, after indicating the relation of Blake to English literature and the intellectual atmosphere of his own time, explain the meaning of Blake's poems and the significance of their characters. |
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... Blake had from the beginning been of the extensive kind. Its fifth and last ... says, cosmology is a literary art. The statement of Los in jerusalem: “I ... Blake, but seeing it as defining a necessary activity of the poetic process. One ...
... Blake as operating or manipulating a “system” of thought, nor should we be misled by his architectural metaphors to ... says. There is a broad consistency in Blake's mythology: there are some uncertain points, such as the role of Los in ...
... Blake uses, and uses constantly. A visionary creates, or dwells in, a higher spiritual world in which the objects of ... says: I am in God's presence night 8c day, And he never turns his face away.8 To Blake, the spiritual world was a ...
A Study of William Blake Northrop Frye. poem in front of them is an imaginative ... Blake's idea that the meaning and the form of a poem are the same thing ... says in one place that his poetry is allegory addressed to the intellectual ...
... Blake can be consistently interpreted in terms of his own theory of poetry ... says, makes a commonplace understanding of him impossible. But once he is ... Blake himself wrote a brilliant criticism of Chaucer, not an obviously ...