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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... SONGS OF EXPERIENCE: “Holy Thursday” and “The Sick Rose” Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library. 3. AMERICA, Plate 14 Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library 4. GLAD DAY Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art 5. JERUSALEM, Plate 28 ...
... Songs of Innocence are then to be taken at their face value as the outpourings of a naive and childlike spontaneity, and the Songs of Experience as the bitter disillusionment resulting from maturity-for when Blake engraved the latter he ...
... Songs of Innocence; the egocentric perception of the general is the “human abstract” of the Songs of Experience. This is the basis of Blake's theory of good and evil which we shall meet in the next chapter. There are two corollaries of ...
... Songs of Experience: the unfallen world is the world of the Songs of Innocence. Naturally those who live most easily in the latter are apt to be, from the point of view of those absorbed wholly in the former, somewhat naive and ...
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