Blake's Critique of Transcendence Love, Jealousy, and the Sublime in The Four Zoas

by Otto, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780198187196
• ISBN10: 019818719X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Blake's Critique of Transcendence is the first full-length book to examine in any detail or consistency the relation between Blake's text and the visual designs in The Four Zoas, one of the most important works in Blake's oeuvre. It uncovers a Blake deeply engaged with the cultural discoursesof his time, in profound dialogue with Swedenborg, Locke, and Young. In the course of this conversation, Blake anatomizes a remarkable variety of cultural practices (including religion, science, and art) designed to achieve transcendence. He focuses in particular on the fate of the body in culturesof transcendence, developing perhaps the first theory of sexual sublimation. Blake's radical visual and verbal strategies in this poem are part of an attempt to defer the movement of transcendence, long enough for the reader to see the warring elements of the fallen world as the dismembered body ofhumanity.

Author Biography

Peter Otto is Senior Lecturer in English, University of Melbourne

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	xi
Key to References	xii
Abbreviations	xiv
Introduction	1	(20)
PART I. THE RHETORIC OF TRANSCENDENCE
Blake, Blake Criticism, and the Sublime	21	(15)
Rational Heavens and Carnal Hells	36	(15)
PART II. FALLING INTO A WORLD OF LOS(S)
The Birth of Los(s) from Tharmas	51	(27)
Urizen's World of Los(s)	78	(23)
A Cacophony of Voices	101	(13)
Building a Swedenborgian Heaven	114	(39)
PART III. BUILDING THE FALLEN WORLD
The Elaboration of Los(S)	153	(36)
PART IV. REASON'S STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FLESH
Urizen Explores his Dens	189	(17)
Flesh and Spirit	206	(41)
A Sensitive Body	247	(38)
PART V. THE END AND BEGINNING OF HISTORY
Death of the Body/Liberation of the Spirit	285	(18)
The Last Judgement	303	(44)
Bibliography	347	(12)
Index	359