Today's Topics:
Re: NASSR
leaving the Blake List
Re: the sublime
Re: leaving the Blake List
Re: leaving the Blake List
Re: leaving the Blake List
Intro
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 17:06:44 -0400
From: wani
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: NASSR
Message-Id: <3571C663.68C46972@islands.vi>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
susan p. reilly wrote:
> NASSR/BARS conference is 6-10 July at St Mary's College, Strawberry
> Hill, England. I have directions if you're interested. The conference
> talks might be open, as they have been at the Wordsworth Conference and
> NASSR conferences of the past-- I don't know. But you can e-mail the
> Eng Dept (St MAry's) Secretary, Kathy Grant at
> grantk@smuc.ac.uk
>
> Susan
>
> You wrote:
> >
> >Well, Paul's abstract sounds intriguing. Could someone tell me when
> and where
> >NASSR will be? If I'll be nearby, maybe I could sneak in to the Blake
> >lectures...
> >
> >--Tom Devine
> >
> >
please stop sending me this info
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 98 19:34:03 -0700
From: Seth T. Ross
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: leaving the Blake List
Message-Id: <9806020234.AA17487@albion.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
Sigh. To leave the Blake List, send an email to
blake-request@albion.com
with the word "unsubscribe" as the SUBJECT of the message.
Please store this note for future reference, when and if you wish to leave the list.
--Seth
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 21:01:57 -0500
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: the sublime
Message-Id: <98060121015722@wc.stephens.edu>
Paul Yoder has provided a very challenging and wideranging commentary on
the tradition of the sublime, which chastens me, since my own brief
comment was much more circumscribed in its frame of reference. I was
reacting to Susan's reference to there having been more than one concept
of the sublime in contention during Blake's time, and indeed I was
referring (or thinking about) the very passage contrasting the "sublime
of the Bible" against the sublime of the classical tradition (though
Blake would have contended, I believe, that there was no sublime in
the classical tradition, as Robert Graves later contended). I would
not ahve gone back even as far as Longinus (though he is unavoidable
in any discussion of the sublime as an aesthetic category, just as
the other rhetoricians are unavoidable when discussing it as a
rhetorical strategy), but would have considered the interesting
crosscurrents emerging from the "graveyard school" and the
della Cruscans and the "tradition" of Ossian and the revolutions
of Chatterton (I hope many more people are reading Chatterton,
by the way--he was really an extraordinary poet!).
I also value de Luca's work on Blake and the sublime and would feel
a fool trying to add to it, much less to Samuel Holt Monk's studies of
the tradition in the 18th centurey (which was the larger context of my
remark, along with David B. MOrris's _The Religious Sublime_ and
Murray Roston's _Prophet and Poet_), but I do think that we have
many fascinating issues in relation to the sublime in Blake (not
to mention the question of whether sublimity is even possible
in the arts of our own time, which raises the troublesome related
question of whethere today's audiences can even respond to the
sublime, and if so, what kind?). IN Blake, there is always
the question of whether the poetic and narrative strategies he
uses to create sublimity are separable from the visual qualities
of his illuminations (the "sweetness" of many of his faces,
for example, especially of many of the representations of the
Saviour, undercuts the effect of the sublime in startling
ways) prints and paintings. The visual "sources" of his
sublime conceptions are often apparent, more so than
any of his poetic strategies. Would Blake have been plesed
to think of sublimity, either in poetry or visual arts, as
a "strategy" or a rhetorical device? I think not, but
the conundrum of the sublime is that it is *supposed* to be
among the most spontaneous and unstudied of *feelings* (for
the audience) while it is, as early as Longinus, one of the
most calculated and potentially cynical of all "effects"
at the disposal of the artist or orator (consider, if it
be not sacrilegious, the impact of _Titanic_ -- the movie,
that is, not the thing itself, as a deployment of many layers
of "sublimity" for our own time) or poet. Wordsworth labored
mightily to reinvent sublimity, and we know Blake's response
to that. Wordsworth's sublime has struck me as trying to
approximate the "idea of the holy," the "numinosity" explored
by Rudolph Otto, whereas Blake aspires to the religious
sublime described by Paul that emerges from the perceptive
powers of the imagination, not from the receptive powers
of the still and unmoving soul.
This is all too scrambled to be useful--my apologies.
If I can make it more coherent , I will post again.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 07:29:06 -0600
From: "ANISHA ADDISON"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: leaving the Blake List
Message-Id: <54F6E0C4A3B@hs.wfbschools.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
I need information on WILLIAM BLAKE!! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME FIND
IT!!! Although your thoughts are very interesting, they are not
helping me. Please, I need information about his childhood. Can you
help?
Sincerly,
Anisha Addison
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 09:57:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: jmichael@sewanee.edu (J. Michael)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: leaving the Blake List
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>I need information on WILLIAM BLAKE!! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME FIND
>IT!!! Although your thoughts are very interesting, they are not
>helping me. Please, I need information about his childhood. Can you
>help?
>
>
>Sincerly,
>Anisha Addison
There's no need to shout. Go to the library and find a biography, such as
the recent one by Peter Ackroyd.
Jennifer Michael
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 12:11:20 -0600
From: "ANISHA ADDISON"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: leaving the Blake List
Message-Id: <56C22F858BD@hs.wfbschools.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
You guys aren't understanding. I went to the library. Either these
books are taken out or they are not giving me what I need. Sorry
about shouting, and that's okay--I'll try somewhere else.
Anisha Addison
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1998 17:20:31 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Intro
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Hello there,
I'm Alan Lopez, a third year English major at IUSB. My
concentrations are in Romantic and Victorian poetry, Literary criticism
and theory, and Medieval studies. I'm also to a lesser extent interested
in 19th century American studies with a focus on Hawthorne, Emerson and
Thoreou.
My interests in Blake were kindled in a British Lit. survery
course my Sophomore year, at which point I was introduced to -The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell- and the poems of -Experience and Innocence-. Following
the course, I did more reading on Blake and his writings.
I hope to engage in intellectually challenging and stimulating
discussion in this group. I look forward to discovering new approaches to
read Blake, approaches which may come from psychology, politics,
feminism, and/