Romantic Literature 1st Blog Page

Romantic Literature

1st Blog Page

In the first blog page, this author will summarize the Book of Urizen by Blake as an archetype. This "book" which is a parody of the biblical Book of Genesis is named for the character Urizen in Blake's mythology. Urizen represents humanity's alienated reason as the source of its oppression. Blake describes Urizen as the "primeval priest" and explains how he came to be separated from all the other Eternals. Due to this, he creates his own alienated and enslaved realm of religious dogma. The characters Los and Enitharmon both are able to create a space within Urizen's fallen universe in order to give birth to their son Orc who represents the spirit of revolution and freedom (Blake, and Grant, 140-144). Although Frye in our text does not make mention of it, in the opinion of this author, it reminds them of the Genesis Apocryphon since it seems more Gnostic in form since Urizen appears more similar to the demiurge of the Gnostics than to a benevolent creator that we see in the Judeo-Christian tradition ("Bibliotecapleyades.net").

The unique archetype literally runs in Urizen's family as we see in the Book of Ahania. It was produced by Blake at the same time as produced the Book of Los. In this book, we meet Ahania, Urizen's son in the midst of the rebellion of another son, Fuzon. The creation story is essentially retold according to Ahania's telling of the story and from his viewpoint (ibid, 160). Certainly, one can not but be stunned by the parallel with the rebellion of Lucifer against God in the Bible ("McDonald Road.org") .

This would mean that he is not totally beholden to the traditions of the Bible. However, Frye goes on to comment that it could simply be that such unconventionality may simply be to the huge size of Blake's intellect. He had a very comprehensive knowledge of the world and his creation of a primeval "eternal" character such as Urizen could simply be his own poetic creation that fits in no standard existing archetype that existed before he put the book of Urizen to pen and ink. Indeed, in this vein one may see parallels with Dante, which would certainly mean no attack on Christian orthodoxy (ibid).

2nd Blog Page

In Milton, its hero is naturally, John Milton. In the story Milton returns from heaven and joins forces with Blake to explore the relationship between living writers and their predecessors in the craft. In addition, they undergo a mystical journey to correct Blake's own spiritual errors (ibid, 234).

The apocryphal musings of Blake bring us to Harold Bloom. Rather than focusing on Blake's work as an archetype, Bloom raises a much more basic thematic question, namely what is the purpose of literature anyway? In other words, the overarching theme of all Blake's greatest work was where he explored the heavenly visions, determining that one cannot remain there, but then must return to earth. The purpose is to analyze this literature and then influence the outside society. While this question may seem to be obvious it has not particularly been one with which twentieth century criticism has concerned itself very much. Rather, most critics have just asked what literature is rather than probing its foundational purpose. In this vein, British criticism has usually been the same as literary history, concerning itself with the explications of texts and with the relationships between them. This reflection on Milton and Blake is also the reflections of every person who is looking for purpose in their lives (ibid, 588).

However, in the last generation more and more people are asking the same question as Bloom and raising the issue of purpose. Like the humans that recorded the creation story in Genesis, we are searching for the purpose of our being and existence. Blake's parables answer use poetic license to extend this question of existence into the time of the twilight of the Enlightenment when new knowledge was causing people to ask many of the same questions that they asked when they set down the creation story of Genesis thousands of years before that (ibid).

Blog Page 3

While Israel may be the apple of God's eye, it appears that Jerusalem is that of Blake's since the work comes from this source as well. Inspiring the famous song of the same name that is so well-known in Britain, the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story oft a young Jesus accompanying his uncle Joseph of Arimathea. They both traveled to the area that is now the United Kingdom and visited Glastonbury (ibid, 308). It is amazing to this author that this well-known British song was inspired by the poetry of William Blake. This is truly a tribute to his lasting influence on British literature and the Western literatry tradition as a whole.