From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 1996 2:52 PM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #130 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 130 Today's Topics: apology for exceptionally rude post Re: blake quarterly Blake's hostility toward women Re: Golgonooza -Reply Re: Blake's hostility toward women Introduction Blake sightings Blake's hostility toward women -Reply Re: Golgonooza -Reply -Reply RE: Blake's Hostility to Women Re: Blake's hostility toward women Re: Blake's hostility toward women archive update ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Nov 96 17:28:57 -0800 From: Seth T. Ross To: blake@albion.com Subject: apology for exceptionally rude post Message-Id: <9611120128.AA02789@albion.com> Content-Type: text/plain Blakeans: FYR, Matthew Whitaker apologizes for the rude, obscene, and threatening post that went out on the list over the weekend. While the post was upsetting, I am pleased that no one took the bait and replied in kind. --Seth PS Please continue to send administrative requests and complaints about inappropriate posts to blake-request@albion.com, where Mark Trevor Smith & I are working to the keep the list running strongly. Begin forwarded message: Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 16:42:20 -0800 (PST) From: "Matthew C. Whitaker" To: "Seth T. Ross" Cc: rankel@CLEO.BC.EDU, postmaster@bc.edu Subject: Re: Golgonooza All right, it's like this- a somebody placed a friend of mine's address on all sorts of mailing list. He was obviously justifiably mad when he demanded to be taken off of the list, while checking his E-Mail on my machine. I apologize on his behalf, and pledge no such action in the future. On Sun, 10 Nov 1996, Seth T. Ross wrote: > > Matthew: > > Your attached posting to the Blake list is extremely offensive and > inappropriate. As the list maintainer, I think you owe me, David Giles, and > the hundreds of scholars on the Blake list a sincere apology for your > inappropriate threats and language. > > Further, I think your post represents a clear misuse of your university > account. Thus, I am forwarding this message to the postmaster at bc.edu for > appropriate action against you and your Internet account privileges. > > As for why "we keep writing you" -- you choose to subscribe to the list, > sending a subscription request on October 22. It makes no sense that you would > issue such a nasty complaint after receiving something you specifically asked > for. > > Finally, I have removed you from the Blake list, and require that you cease > and desist from any further use of albion.com online resources, with the > exception of your forthcoming apology, which you can forward directly to me at > seth@albion.com. > > Yours, > Seth Ross > Albion sysadmin and maintainer of the Blake list > --- > A\ Seth Ross \ Publisher \ AlbionBooks > A A\ Books & Online Services \ San Francisco USA > A A\ Visit us on the WWW at the URL http://www.albion.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 20:40:18 +0800 From: Seah Koon Tay <"pinsea78@pacific.net.sg"@pacific.net.sg> To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: blake quarterly Message-Id: <199611121237.UAA13723@darwin.pacific.net.sg> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Seah Koon Tay wrote: > > Patricia Neill wrote: > > > > Hi Paul, > > > > I am managing editor of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, and I'd be happy to > > send you (and anyone else here) a complimentary copy of the journal, along > > with subscription information. Just let me know your mailing address. And > > individual subscription is $25/year, make checks out to Blake, Department of > > English, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627. > > > > All best, > > Patricia Neill > > > > PS If anyone has any "news" items on matters Blakean, please feel free to > > send them along to me. They will either be published in our newsletter > > section or on our forthcoming web page. > > > > >On that note, do any of you subscribe to _Blake Quarterly? I am > > >interested in reviewing some of the articles but cannot find copies > > >in my university's library nor in the major university nearby (UM > > >Minneapolis). If you have an opinion in its quality and/or have > > >knowledge on subscription, please let me know. > > > > > >Thanks > > > > > >paul scanlon > > > > > > > unsubscribe pse unsubscribe me from blake@albion.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 06:11:46 -0700 (MST) From: mpuszta@hayden.edu (Marsha Pusztai) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake's hostility toward women Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: blake@albion.com From: mpuszta@hayden.edu (Marsha Pusztai) Subject: Blake's hostility toward women I have been reading some arguments about William Blake's treatment of women and his accompanying images of masculinity being the central issues he addresses--that Blake's work is informed by animosity toward women in spite of his outward display of compassion toward them. Some see it as an unconscious posturing, while others think that Blake's women are emanations from men as primary beings, women being later reabsorbed by the "perfected state of redemption": that his sense of maternal deprivation encouraged the romanticized masculinity extant in his work, and that his allegedly unresolved psychological problems toward women maintain powerful connections to conflicts within the infant-mother relationship. It seems presumptuous to me that, simply because he came out of the English dissenting tradition and considered The Enlightenment evil, his resulting emotional responses to women are so antipathetic. I hate to bring up Storch again, but she argues that his overt sympathy toward women is rendered impotent by a subconscious sociological response that undermines his public presentations. This is the story: Blake's drive to assert the masculine and control the feminine originates in weak father figures with which he was unable to identify and bond. Inability to form a wall strong enough to stand against the rival parent results in weak gender development and a magnification of masculinity designed to fiend off the internalized mother image--the rival. This internalized rival exemplifies the poetic vision of the persecuting mother or the "Female Will," characterized as a terrible power emanating from women. I feel these critics must consider that the final effect of a work depends on whether it is viewed by the reader as an act of independence or an act of domination. This, in turn, has everything to do with the authority of the speaker. That authority grows as the speaker is weakened and made vulnerable by the tensions created. As in all literature, the manipulator of the action--the voice, the speaker--must share equal vulnerability from that action as all other constituents in the work. So is it fair to say that Blake experienced human life as an ongoing conflict between the internalized fantasy and the embodiment of the adult encounter, whether male, female, or altogether lacking in gender specificity? I would appreciate some feedback from you all on what I believe are critical misreadings of Blake's images of women, the patterns of maternal loss in his work, and his representations of masculinity. It seems to me that Blake's journey, as he struggled through his personal trials, caused him to emerge in the end with a measure of balance and harmony, rather than this attitude of ambivalence and womb envy. I just cannot seem to pinpoint whether that, in the process of his Becoming, the misogyny was indeed there, or whether there was any specific gender-bashing at all. Thanks for the enlightenment, Marsha ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 16:17:03 -0500 (EST) From: dpvintin@acpub.duke.edu (Giles David) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Golgonooza -Reply Message-Id: <199611122117.QAA00566@argus.acpub.duke.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Seth, sir. You run a watertight ship. That's good in a captain. And I like your dealings with us all. But the world needs all the grace it can get, and who doesn't have shares in humble pie trade? So if at all possible, I'd like to say I accept any apology, and would like to recieve Matthew back into the fold if he wishes. Please pass on my message. I'm unable to offer the firm analytical grasp in friendship, so offer ledgerdemain instead. The lad's at university and has got far more useful stuff to say than I have. I always remember the words of an Irish priest in confession: "Don't take umbrage under an umbrella because you can't deal with barracking beneath a baldochino!". I felt no real threat, sir, and take no umbrage. I'm a Harmless Eccentric Grade 2 as you know - listed as such by M15 from monking days. But in a puny way I'm trying to put the zip back into hymnody, and skip with a little postmodern christian blakean zenody. Trying fresh ways of 'doing' hymn as an artform - a Hurrah on the landscape if you like - and the Finster/Blake idea is a more serious proposition than it seems. But on a somewhat larger scale. Standing Songs. Hymns that become diaphonous and theophanous to the landscape. That teach us again how to polish moon with eyelash, and whistle up the mystery in our sisterbrotherbones. Is that a stab at Golgonooza? An attempt to verb it. Is that Teilhard's noos. And why oh why, is the word verb itself a noun! Pam and others, I hope my hymns express my ideas very much better than my prose can. Never learnt to argue with/in prose, so hide beind the helmet of humour, and the hope kindled in a hymn. Giles (Don't know if this will reach, as the e-mail has had technical problems) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:28:55 -0800 From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's hostility toward women Message-Id: <199611130228.SAA09030@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> Marsha, I'm not sure I understand completely the focus of your concern here (e.g., whether the stuff which follows "this is the story:" [below] is meant as a paraphrase of Storch or your own interpolated argument---I suspect the former but can't be certain based on the way you present it). You phrase your question as though you expect that there is a "right" or "wrong" answer that you need to find. There can, of course, be no definitive answer to your question; if you, like others who have written to the list on this subject, see Blake's view of women as balanced, then you should not be second-guessing yourself in the light of others's arguments as though one interpretation, critical approach, etc, is the "right" or only one. Criticism can only examine the literary "artifact" from one particular viewpoint in order to suggest some or one of the things the work has to tell us from the cultural distance of 150 or 200 years. In 200 MORE years, there will be a metacritique of the feminist critique, and on it will go. This is not to say that Storch doesn't make some valid points---I don't know and haven't read her work. My own personal critical tastes at this point tend away from feminist critique. Feminists have raised our awareness of the male biases and patriarchal discourses inherint in literature in the same way that future literary historians will point to our own critical blind spots. Now that they've done so I think it's time to move on [God I know I'm in for some heat on this]. I applaud the feminists who are working in another direction now--viz--to recover the works of "women authors". I'll be even happier when gender ceases to be an issue altogether and we can be to consider men AND women as authors and not as representatives of their respective sexes (can't SOMEONE offer a course on Edgeworth, Austen, and Shelley (Mary, that is) and skip this damn "women authors" thing altogether? Ironically, the more we focus on women as "women" the more we reinscribe their status as secondary and subordinate. Let's get beyond it. Blake likely did not chose to display whatever masculinist prejudice he may have-- he simply was not able to any large extent to do otherwise, and given his own cultural baggage, he did indeed, do much to rise above it. Sorry if this is too simplistic or if I misread you. S. Reilly You wrote: > >To: blake@albion.com >From: mpuszta@hayden.edu (Marsha Pusztai) >Subject: Blake's hostility toward women > > I have been reading some arguments about William Blake's treatment >of women and his accompanying images of masculinity being the central >issues he addresses--that Blake's work is informed by animosity toward >women in spite of his outward display of compassion toward them. Some see >it as an unconscious posturing, while others think that Blake's women are >emanations from men as primary beings, women being later reabsorbed by the >"perfected state of redemption": that his sense of maternal deprivation >encouraged the romanticized masculinity extant in his work, and that his >allegedly unresolved psychological problems toward women maintain powerful >connections to conflicts within the infant-mother relationship. > It seems presumptuous to me that, simply because he came out of the >English dissenting tradition and considered The Enlightenment evil, his >resulting emotional responses to women are so antipathetic. I hate to bring >up Storch again, but she argues that his overt sympathy toward women is >rendered impotent by a subconscious sociological response that undermines >his public presentations. > This is the story: Blake's drive to assert the masculine and >control the feminine originates in weak father figures with which he was >unable to identify and bond. Inability to form a wall strong enough to >stand against the rival parent results in weak gender development and a >magnification of masculinity designed to fiend off the internalized mother >image--the rival. This internalized rival exemplifies the poetic vision of >the persecuting mother or the "Female Will," characterized as a terrible >power emanating from women. > I feel these critics must consider that the final effect of a work >depends on whether it is viewed by the reader as an act of independence or >an act of domination. This, in turn, has everything to do with the >authority of the speaker. That authority grows as the speaker is weakened >and made vulnerable by the tensions created. As in all literature, the >manipulator of the action--the voice, the speaker--must share equal >vulnerability from that action as all other constituents in the work. So is >it fair to say that Blake experienced human life as an ongoing conflict >between the internalized fantasy and the embodiment of the adult encounter, >whether male, female, or altogether lacking in gender specificity? > I would appreciate some feedback from you all on what I believe are >critical misreadings of Blake's images of women, the patterns of maternal >loss in his work, and his representations of masculinity. It seems to me >that Blake's journey, as he struggled through his personal trials, caused >him to emerge in the end with a measure of balance and harmony, rather than >this attitude of ambivalence and womb envy. I just cannot seem to pinpoint >whether that, in the process of his Becoming, the misogyny was indeed >there, or whether there was any specific gender-bashing at all. > >Thanks for the enlightenment, >Marsha > > > ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:37:17 -0800 (PST) From: Marcus Rudolf Brownell To: blake@albion.com Subject: Introduction Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Hi, I'm Marcus Brownell, in the M.A. program at the University of Oregon, and Blake enthusiast. I'm still new to cyberblake so I'm happy to have found Blake outside the walls of acadamia. I am especially interested in Blake's adoption of the prophetic mode from the Bible and of course the Mental Travelling this area has taken me on. Cheers, Marcus ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 21:10:21 -0600 From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake sightings Message-Id: <96111221102180@wc.stephens.edu> The advertisement for Harold Bloom's new book, _Omens of Milennium_ (from Riverhead Books) is illustrated with the main image from the frontispiece to Blake's illumination of Robert Blair's _The Grave_, called "The Skeleton Reanimated" in some editions. Considering Bloom's long fascination with Blake, and the apparent subject of the new book, the Blake association is not surprising. Also, Mark Jarman and David Mason have edited an anthology of "Poets of the New Formalism" called _Rebel Angels_ (from Story Line Press); the cover is the fascinating Blake image, a version of which occurs in MHH, but it's the large print on this cover, of "The Good and Evil Angels Struggling" (an image given some trivializing interpretation not long ago on this list). Given the poetic politics of the anthology, the choice of the image is a witty comment, though not entirely respectful to Blake. As has been observed with reference to the "proverbs," it would appear that the images are also quotable to many and diverse purposes, proving only that "pictures" are "worth" a thousand words or more because their muteness can be exploited almost at will. Tom Dillingham ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:42:20 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, mpuszta@hayden.edu Subject: Blake's hostility toward women -Reply Message-Id: Marsha, Some time ago on this list, I did try to indicate my own reasons for rejecting interpretations of Blake which accord women inferior status so will just say here that his vision of Contraries begins with the contraries in Innocence of Eden and Beulah. .. and, though these are indeed associated with Males in Eden and females in Beulah, there is a need for the complementaries of fiery, creative mental energy and soft repose - represented, quasi-alchemically, too, by the sun and moon. Blake's work is permeated with contraries throughout - primarily because his work deals with the Fall of Albion from an expanded state of unity with God into separation and alientation from God and Albion's own divine humanity. Terrified by Urizen's stern moral laws, the female emanations flee from their male consorts and weave their soft fibres into the hardened fibres of the world of generation. In this way, Blake does not blame the female for the fall , as does the Bible, but sees her as reflecting the fallen vision of the darkened males. My doctoral thesis on Blake has not been published, but deals at length with these contraries - in case this approach interests you. I think it does Blake a great disservice to drag in dubious psychological innuendos and pseudo-biography where it does not even belong since the main body of his work evokes and dramatises the progressive stages of Albion's Fall. Pam, University of South Africa ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:46:00 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: dpvintin@acpub.duke.edu, blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Golgonooza -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Giles, You may like to look at a book called `Poems and Carols' , Selwyn Image and Peter Horne ... I haven't seen it, but have its book cover on display here as among our latest acquisitions in the library. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 08:43:30 -0500 From: tfish To: blake@albion.com Subject: RE: Blake's Hostility to Women Message-Id: <3289D082.62EC@cc.cumber.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Marsha, Thanks for the thoughtful summation and response to some of the threads of recent discussion. I don't know as I am ready to articulate a full and substantive response. But as I have been "lurking" on the ongoing debate, I find myself basically sharing your perceptions. I believe you have pointed to an important critical principle in reminding us that we need to assess the overall effect and focus of Blake's work (or any writer's). After all, if conflicts and ambivalences are "real" and not just aesthetic constructs, any resolution or transcendence is only going to be partial and provisionary. If the ongoing discussion confirms anything, it confirms that gender tensions are very "real" in Blake's world both personally and socially . . . and in our world also, personally, socially, and critically. If I understand you rightly, I agree that Blake is largely successful in negotiating, balancing, and harmonizing these tensions, in part I think because he is always _willing_ to re-vision his own engendered perceptions. His work does not record his linear movement to the articulation of one engendered vision or metaphor of human experience which he then must protect and defend. (This is a stance we can see in other writers and readers!) Rather his work from _Innocence_ and _Experience_ and from _Thel_ and _America_ onward shows his perpetual re-visioning. This process in Blake is sometimes a radical one reflective of the depth and strength of the tensions and issues he seeks to confront. However, to me this process does not reflect an irresolute vacillation or an unresolving conflict but rather a self-conscious and artful series of "checks and balances," of constructions and destructions, that ironically shows Blake shaping "the process of his Becoming." Tom Fish tfish@cc.cumber.edu ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 09:30:56 -0500 (EST) From: Scott A Leonard To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's hostility toward women Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Marsha: the list has gone round about this pretty recently, but I think it's important. Other's will give you chapter and verse citing examples and counter-examples RE Blake as mysogyn. I'd just like to go on record saying that psychoanalyzing anyone on the basis of their artistic productions is, at the very best, tenuous evidence of anything. At worst, it's pseudo-science. It's a predetermined outcome dressed up in exotic (because extradisciplinary) conceptual garb. How can Storch--or anyone--KNOW anything about the development of Blake's psyche? I read his brawny males as derived largely for a very testosterone-dense epic tradition. You know, guys with helmets and "raisd spears" pitting spit, blood, and a little wit against a hostile universe. Scott Leonard ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 09:11:03 -0600 (CST) From: Suzanne Araas Vesely To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's hostility toward women Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Margaret, My dissertation deals with the issues that you raise, discussing Storch among others. I share your discomfort with attempts to psychologize Blake. My response is to put his portrayals of women in the historical context of what women were doing: they were active participants in popularizing the notion that sense-based observation and rationalism ought have primacy over imagination and vision. I find it anachronistic to dismiss Blake's powerful visionary message without reference to history, or, in this case, herstory. Please also see my posting on Bluestockings behind Blake's apparent misogyny; it was on the list about ten days ago. Suzanne Araas Vesely On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, Marsha Pusztai wrote: > To: blake@albion.com > From: mpuszta@hayden.edu (Marsha Pusztai) > Subject: Blake's hostility toward women > > I have been reading some arguments about William Blake's treatment > of women and his accompanying images of masculinity being the central > issues he addresses--that Blake's work is informed by animosity toward > women in spite of his outward display of compassion toward them. Some see > it as an unconscious posturing, while others think that Blake's women are > emanations from men as primary beings, women being later reabsorbed by the > "perfected state of redemption": that his sense of maternal deprivation > encouraged the romanticized masculinity extant in his work, and that his > allegedly unresolved psychological problems toward women maintain powerful > connections to conflicts within the infant-mother relationship. > It seems presumptuous to me that, simply because he came out of the > English dissenting tradition and considered The Enlightenment evil, his > resulting emotional responses to women are so antipathetic. I hate to bring > up Storch again, but she argues that his overt sympathy toward women is > rendered impotent by a subconscious sociological response that undermines > his public presentations. > This is the story: Blake's drive to assert the masculine and > control the feminine originates in weak father figures with which he was > unable to identify and bond. Inability to form a wall strong enough to > stand against the rival parent results in weak gender development and a > magnification of masculinity designed to fiend off the internalized mother > image--the rival. This internalized rival exemplifies the poetic vision of > the persecuting mother or the "Female Will," characterized as a terrible > power emanating from women. > I feel these critics must consider that the final effect of a work > depends on whether it is viewed by the reader as an act of independence or > an act of domination. This, in turn, has everything to do with the > authority of the speaker. That authority grows as the speaker is weakened > and made vulnerable by the tensions created. As in all literature, the > manipulator of the action--the voice, the speaker--must share equal > vulnerability from that action as all other constituents in the work. So is > it fair to say that Blake experienced human life as an ongoing conflict > between the internalized fantasy and the embodiment of the adult encounter, > whether male, female, or altogether lacking in gender specificity? > I would appreciate some feedback from you all on what I believe are > critical misreadings of Blake's images of women, the patterns of maternal > loss in his work, and his representations of masculinity. It seems to me > that Blake's journey, as he struggled through his personal trials, caused > him to emerge in the end with a measure of balance and harmony, rather than > this attitude of ambivalence and womb envy. I just cannot seem to pinpoint > whether that, in the process of his Becoming, the misogyny was indeed > there, or whether there was any specific gender-bashing at all. > > Thanks for the enlightenment, > Marsha > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 16:45:04 -0500 (EST) From: Joseph Viscomi To: blake online Subject: archive update Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII William Blake Archive: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/blake Update The editors of the Blake Archive are pleased to announce that copies F, H, and O of The Book of Thel and copies a, C, and J of Visions of the Daughters of Albion are now publicly accessible. The images are linked to enlargements and to transcriptions edited to correspond to the particular copy; plates are displayed in the order they appear in the copy and are identified by that order, as well as by their Bentley, Erdman, and Keynes plate numbers. The source of the digital images are new 4x5 color transparencies, which were color corrected against the originals. They were scaled to the size of the originals and scanned in 24-bit color at 300dpi. The resulting digitial images, which were color corrected against the transparencies, are displayed as jpeg images, at 100dpi and at 300dpi. The former image will be displayed larger or smaller than the original depending on your monitor's resolution. In the near future, though, using a program being developed by the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities , you will be able to receive these images resized on the fly according to your monitor's resolution. We will continue to make copies of illuminated books accessible once we have scanned and color corrected the images and edited the texts. In the next few months, we will display The Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy D, Urizen copy G, Song of Los copy B, Europe copies B and E, and America copy E. We will also post a general bibliography on Blake and select bibliographies for each of these books, as well as Erdman's edition of Blake's poetry and prose. Users will thus be able to browse the Archive, downloading images and texts (for private use only). When the search engine is operational, they will also be able to search the Archive for words, visual motifs, or bibliographical information, because we are also encoding all texts, plates, and images in Standard General Markup Language (see Plan of the Archive). We presently have over 1200 transparencies of a projected 3000 for the Archive. With the entire Rosenwald Collection of illuminated books and the Essick Collection of prints, as well as works from the Glasgow University Library and the New York Public Library, we have at least one copy of every illuminated book, major series of prints (Book of Job, Dante illustrations, Night Thoughts, etc.), and commercial engraving. We will be adding paintings and manuscripts as we add other important collections to the Archive. Scanning, editing, and encoding all of these images will keep the site under construction for the next few years. Users can visit this page for future updates about our progress and about future developments at the Institute that affect the Archive, such as INOTE (written in the programming language Java), a tool that makes it possible for users to search, enlarge, compare, and annotate images. Joseph Viscomi Morris Eaves Robert N. Essick -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #130 **************************************