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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... poetic process. In the early stages I felt all the resistance against grappling with a specific symbolic language, which “has to be got up like so much Gothic,” in Professor Douglas Bush's Words, that so many other critics of Blake had ...
A Study of William Blake Northrop Frye. poetic process. One should never think of Blake as operating or manipulating ... poets, with the Milton whose Raphael advised Adam that while studying the stars was all very well, keeping his own ...
... poetic life. The combination of radical and evangelical sympathies——so frequent in England, so rare elsewhere—remained with him to the end. He hailed with delight the apocalyptic element in the American and French revolutions, the ...
... poet of such importance is entitled to. It is large enough, however, to justify a statement of what is believed to ... poets a victim of anthologies. Countless collections of verse include a dozen or so of his lyrics, but if we wish to ...
... poets do not fully comprehend what they are writing.3 All his poetry was written as though it were about to have the immediate social impact of a new play. Besides, if we look at some of the other poets of the second half of the ...