Today's Topics:
Re: Transformation?
introduction
introduction
introduction
introduction
Explication
Re: Explication
Re: repetition (& Kabbalah)
Missive
Re: Blake class
Re: Blake class
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Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 16:53:47 +0500 (EST)
From: Meredith Thomson
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Transformation?
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Dear Gloudina,
I saw the same car commercial and I found myself rather annoyed
that the "Ode to Joy" and brotherhood was now shilling for
robots and automobiles. It's an interesting question, though -- when
Blake, and other artists who create challenging work, slide into being
popular icons of culture, what is lost? (I should say here that I didn't
like Fred Astaire's dancing turned to selling vacuum cleaners, either.)
Or do people think that nothing is lost and everything is gained by this
kind of familiarity? I work in the UNC library cataloging dept. while I'm
writing my dissertation, and I see Blake's pictures and short quotations
represented on the covers of other books all the time. I found "Albion
Rose," for example, on a book touting the French enlightenment. Does
knee-jerk familiarity have anything to do with comprehension.? I'm not
talking about genuine influence, like Joyce Cary et al. I'd be interested
in the group's reaction to such "sightings."
Meredith Thomson
mwthomso@email.unc.edu
On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Izak Bouwer wrote:
> This is Gloudina talking, (Izak's Shadow of Delight.)
> I just want to say thank you to Tom Devine for writing
> so movingly about the "active contemplation" that Blake
> recommended.
> I also want to report a Blake sighting. In _The Globe
> and Mail_ (Toronto edition) this morning there is a small
> inset picturing Blake's "The Ancient of Days" directing
> one to an article inside on "Is God at the end of the
> scientific rainbow?" (an adaption of a longer article that
> appeared in _The New Republic._) Above the article in the
> Globe and Mail is a large black and white "Ancient of Days."
> In the last few days I have been fascinated by an Audi
> commercial on TV picturing dummies coming to inspect an Audi
> to the strains of "An der Freude" from Beethoven's Ninth.
> This song surely has become a cultural icon, the tune known
> by young people who have no inkling who wrote it and when.
> I think that Blake's "Ancient of Days" has become such an
> icon. How surprised Lady Hesketh would have been if she could
> see into the future. In 1804, she intimated in a letter to
> Hayley that Blake was one of those 'inferior or midling artists.'
>
> Gloudina Bouwer
>
>
>
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Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 15:15:20 -0700
From: "Stephen Eric Hancock"
To: blake@albion.com
Cc:
Subject: introduction
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Hi,
I guess I'm supposed to send everyone an introduction to myself. My name is Stephen Hancock, and I'm a graduate student in English at Brigham Young University. I just finished my first run through Jerusalem, and I've presented some work on redefinition of belief structures in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I'm looking mostly to listen in- to keep my connections to Blake's work by reviewing what you all have to say. Masters Student life gets busy, and this is a way of forcing myself to stay involved.
Thanks,
Steve Hancock
peregrin@mailexcite.com
Free web-based email, Forever, From anywhere!
http://www.mailexcite.com
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Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 15:15:25 -0700
From: "Stephen Eric Hancock"
To: blake@albion.com
Cc:
Subject: introduction
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Hi,
I guess I'm supposed to send everyone an introduction to myself. My name is Stephen Hancock, and I'm a graduate student in English at Brigham Young University. I just finished my first run through Jerusalem, and I've presented some work on redefinition of belief structures in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I'm looking mostly to listen in- to keep my connections to Blake's work by reviewing what you all have to say. Masters Student life gets busy, and this is a way of forcing myself to stay involved.
Thanks,
Steve Hancock
peregrin@mailexcite.com
Free web-based email, Forever, From anywhere!
http://www.mailexcite.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 15:16:55 -0700
From: "Stephen Eric Hancock"
To: blake@albion.com
Cc:
Subject: introduction
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Hi,
I guess I'm supposed to send everyone an introduction to myself. My name is Stephen Hancock, and I'm a graduate student in English at Brigham Young University. I just finished my first run through Jerusalem, and I've presented some work on redefinition of belief structures in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I'm looking mostly to listen in- to keep my connections to Blake's work by reviewing what you all have to say. Masters Student life gets busy, and this is a way of forcing myself to stay involved.
Thanks,
Steve Hancock
peregrin@mailexcite.com
Free web-based email, Forever, From anywhere!
http://www.mailexcite.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 15:16:57 -0700
From: "Stephen Eric Hancock"
To: blake@albion.com
Cc:
Subject: introduction
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Hi,
I guess I'm supposed to send everyone an introduction to myself. My name is Stephen Hancock, and I'm a graduate student in English at Brigham Young University. I just finished my first run through Jerusalem, and I've presented some work on redefinition of belief structures in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I'm looking mostly to listen in- to keep my connections to Blake's work by reviewing what you all have to say. Masters Student life gets busy, and this is a way of forcing myself to stay involved.
Thanks,
Steve Hancock
peregrin@mailexcite.com
Free web-based email, Forever, From anywhere!
http://www.mailexcite.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 18:07:25 -0600
From: "Dave Brodsky"
To: "Blake@albion.com"
Subject: Explication
Message-Id: <000101be013d$c6b16560$adaf51d1@daveman>
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charset="iso-8859-1"
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Thanks for all the advice.
I have begun my research at various libraries and will keep you guys posted
with my progress.
At this point I am investigating Blake's own history and other works he had
done.
Dave Brodsky
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Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 21:56:01 -0900
From: ndeeter
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Explication
Message-Id: <36356E81.4D60@concentric.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Dave Brodsky wrote:
> Thanks for all the advice.
> I have begun my research at various libraries and will keep you guys posted
> with my progress.
> At this point I am investigating Blake's own history and other works he had
> done.
Careful. Don't stray too far from the poem. If the assignment is an
explication, chances are, all the information is there within the poem
and your arena of experience. It's lovely that your interested and
prepared to do heavy research on a topic. But I'd hate for you to get
side-tracked and miss the purpose of the assignment.
Nathan Deeter
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Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 12:37:10 +0000 (GMT)
From: "E.T. Larrissy"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: repetition (& Kabbalah)
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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See my forthcoming essay on 'Repetition and the Printing Metaphor in Blake',
which also touches on the influence of the Kabbalah, and proffers a brief
thought on the topic of Walter Benjamin. It will be in what promises to be
an interesting volume:
Steve Clark and David Worrall (eds), _Blake in the Nineties_ (New
York: St Martin's Press; London: Macmillan, 1999)
Edward Larrissy
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Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 21:36:35 -0700
From: "S&J Faulkner"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Missive
Message-Id:
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At last, I've arrived at Beulah
Stephen Faulkner
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Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 15:49:46 +0100
From: stavis@coco.ihi.ku.dk
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake class
Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19981030154946.007aa950@coco.ihi.ku.dk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Dear Tom Dillingham & Paul Yoder,
I too am planning to teach Blake next semester, and your thoughts on the
subject have made me re-think my position. Unlike you, however, I'm
teaching Blake in a survey course on British Literature (1745-1890). I
should really only teach Blake once, but I'm going to steal another lesson.
I thought that 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' would be an inevitable
first choice for the first lesson, but your mails have made me think that
it might be possible to skip it all together. I think it is a fair
assumption that many of the students have had 'The Tyger' and 'The Lamb' in
school, so I should perhaps be showing them a different side to Blake.
(Besides, if I were to teach 'Songs' I'd have to fight it out with their
remembrance of their school teachers' Freudian analysis of the poetry. In
Denmark, most high school teachers seem to infect their students with
heavy-handed psycho-babble. --Most frustrating!)
Anyway, my question to you is:
Is it feasible to teach 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' in the first
lesson and 'The First Book of Urizen' in the second? Or would it be a gross
misrepresentation of Blake? And would it be unfair not to include 'Songs'?
Henriette Stavis
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Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 16:55:00 -0500 (CDT)
From: rpyoder@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake class
Message-Id:
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Henriette,
How many class days do you have? My own sense is that *MHH* may not be the
best intro to Blake (I know I'm blaspheming here). If you assume that the
students already know "The Tyger" and "The Lamb," then you might try using
different poems from the *Songs*. I find that the "Chimney Sweep" and
"Holy Thursday" poems work well for this sort of thing. That would set up
*MHH* and then *Urizen* if you have enough time. In my survey I sometimes
will start with contrary songs, then move to *Thel* and *VDA* as analogous
contraries in the prophetic mode.
How much total time to allot to Blake in a survey class is a whole
different question. Despite my own Blakean preferences, I sometimes leave
him out completely. I usually end up alternating him with Keats from
semester to semester. You can't cover everybody everytime.
My advice: try the *MHH*, *Urizen* sequence (although I would urge a pair
of songs). See what happens. But be straight with your students about the
pitfalls. They are going to feel some combination of elation and
confusion. Some will be fascinated, some will be threatened. Reassure
them that confusion is the appropriate first response, and that Blake knew
that himself. Blake always has his eye on his audience. Are you watching?
Are you paying attention? The reader's confusion, or at least my
confusion, I find, arises most from an inability or unwillingness to credit
what is happening before our eyes. We may start by saying, "What?!" but
Blake expects you to settle down and recognize, "Oh, so this is the kind of
thing that happens here. So what kind of place is this?" *MHH* is a good
way to make this point. You know Hell by the kinds of proverbs its
residents have. There are obviously many levels to Blake's poems, but
there is also a literalness to the images that holds the whole thing
together.
For me the biggest problem is fighting the urge to "explain" Blake to the
students. It is very hard to bite my tongue sometimes as my students try
to piece together a Blakean system based on one or two poems. It's hard to
know when to step in, but letting the students run generally pays off well.
I sometimes want to say, "You see, this shows up later as . . . . " The
system is lots of fun to talk about, but it too often becomes a
distraction from the illuminated page we are reading. And for better or
for worse, I still insist that they engage that page in all its glorious
detail. It keeps me grounded in class as much as it does them.
Paul Yoder
"Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce / Angels" Milton
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End of blake-d Digest V1998 Issue #82
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