3/10/09 Blake

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/images/tyger.jpg

http://www.iwu.edu/~wchapman/britpoet/romanceirony.html

schedule:

• R1 due this week for those planning to revise
  • include original
• assignments:
  • neither one due for a while, but I thought I should get them out before break. The poems assignment especially is one that will benefit greatly from your reading the assignment now, then letting it percolate in your unconscious.
  • at present, poems due 3/31, paper due 4/14, but could invert these dates. Please read by Thurs and we'll take a vote.

Blake is generally taken to be a Romantic. But he can also be seen (and has been seen) as an interesting borderline case.

As a way into this borderline-ness, let me borrow, somewhat loosely, an opposition from Northrop Frye. Frye opposes the terms irony and romance by contrasting the degree of power and freedom enjoyed by the hero. The greater the power and freedom of the hero, the closer we get to romance, which is characterized by wish-fulfillment, the capacity for transformation, successful quests, and so on. The less power and freedom the hero has, the closer we get to irony, which is characterized by frustration, restriction, nightmare, being stuck in repetition without change

• important to note that Frye here isn't using irony in traditional sense of "disjunction between what is and what appears to be"; rather, looking at a mode of literature which emphasizes frustration and limitation rather than fulfillment.
• these two meanings of irony are related, which is why Frye can put them together. The Augustans use irony to satirize; their worldview is one in which humans are by nature limited, fallen creatures, and they poke fun at humans for thinking that they're greater than they are. Since poking fun of limitations is something that irony does exceptionally well, it makes lots of sense to link the two in this way.
• The meanings of "Romance" are even more complex. On the one hand, the term refers to a genre of literature with a long and complicated history; in the adjective form, Romantic, it refers to a literary period; as Frye is using it, the term refers to a mode of literature in which transformation and fulfillment are possible. Still, one can intuitively see how this all fits together: all three versions of romance emphasize imagination and thus possibility.
• In practice, and as these terms would be applied to actual literature, they get more complicated still. Is it really impossible for characters in Augustan satire to do anything right? No; In "Death of Dr. Swift," for instance, Swift makes it very clear that he is as prideful as the next person, but there is no question that his ATTEMPT to oppose vice and tyranny are the right things to do. People can do good; it's just that they have to overcome their baser natures to do so. The Augustans assume the worst, and aspire to do better.
• The same is true for the Romantics. Take Keats, for example. Does "The Eve of St. Agnes" show that "what the imagination siezes as Beauty must be Truth, whether it existed or not"? Yes and no. Yes, Madeline's dream comes true. But as we saw, how good it is that the dream comes true is open to question in many ways. The same can be said for Coleridge--the mariner has great power but he doesn't seem to have a lot of freedom--and even for Wordsworth, insofar as he recognizes that this Presence that he perceives in nature is something he must half create as well as half perceive. People have limits in the Romantic world view; it's just that they perceive these limits in attempting to realize the ideal. The Romantics assume the best, and acknowledge partial failures.
• Taking romance and irony as modes--ways of writing rather than types of writing--it would be possible to be a romantic neo-classical poet or an ironic Romantic.

Starting question: is Blake an ironist or a Romantic?

"The Chimney Sweeper" (in SoI)

• is it ironic?
  • in traditional sense: do we perceive a reality which differs from the speaker's belief?
  • in Frye's sense: is this a vision of frustration or fulfillment? (DEPENDS on whether the vision is true or not)
• if Blake is an ironist to whatever degree, is the irony directed towards human failings like pride? if this is satire, what's the object of it?

"The Chimney Sweeper" (in SoE)

• ironic in traditional sense? in Frye's sense?
• who's the target, and what exactly do they do?
• what happens when we put these two visions of the world together? does this poem resolve the ambiguity of the first poem, or change tracks altogether?

"The Tyger"

• is this a theodicy (a "vindication of divine justice in the face of the existence of evil or suffering")?
• is it ironic? if so, in which sense?
  • Frye: nightmare
  • traditional: straight indictment?
  • what about the illustration? is this tiger scary?

"London"

• ironic, or no? In which sense? Is the image of "mind-forged manacles," in particular, a Romantic or an ironic image?

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

hypothesis: Blake is romantic in believing the transformation and fulfillment are possible, but he is an ironist in focusing on our customary failure to attain that state.

--> 2 questions: what would fulfillment be like, for Blake? What prevents us from attaining it?

plate 14:

• fulfillment: perception of infinite
• obstacle: body/soul distinction

so who or what separates body and soul?

• Christianity:
  • according to Christian thought, what happens to your body when you die? Which part is therefore more important?
  • which part of you is lustful--your body or your soul? Which part is gluttonous?
  • what does "mortification of the flesh" mean? Why would one do it?
• Western thought in general: an example:
  • Descartes (1596-1650):
    • dualism: belief that body and soul are essentially different; in cartesian dualism, soul is non-material, and inhabits a corporeal, mechanically operating body. [E.g. of proof: mind is nondivisible, body is divisible]. Body likened to a clock: pure mechanism operating according to established physical laws. "I think, therefore I am"--what can be known, and is therefore certain, is the "I" that knows--the soul.
    • why this example: cartesian coordinates--Descartes invented the idea that space could be measured. That makes possible algebraic solutions to geometrical problems; impossible to overstate Descartes' importance in the development of science and engineering--which is to say that he is of central importance in leading to the Industrial Revolution.
• what's striking about this: if you go after the body/soul distinction, you are attacking BOTH science and traditional religion.

So let's work this back into the poem:

• institutional religion:
  • plate 11: organized religion as enslavement
  • what form does this separation of body and soul take?
    • restraining desire: plate 4; plate 8 brothels, plate 10 sooner murder
• rationality (science, technology, industry): mills in plate 17

Is this poem ironic in the traditional sense? If there is a persona here, who is it and how do we read through it?

• plate 3 Heaven and Hell; voice of the Devil, Proverbs of Hell
• contraries are necessary: plate 3, plate 16 prolific/devouring
• So there is a persona in this section (and presumably in others, although not always the same persona). but how do you read through this kind of irony?

Back to Songs:

"The Chimney Sweeper" in SoI again: does seeing Blake's vision of good and evil in MHH solve our problem about how ironic the central vision is, or does it simply deepen an irony that remains irresolvable?

"The Chimney Sweeper" in SoE: Does it make sense now for Blake to blame the church for what happens? Does this poem resolve the ambiguity of "Sweeper" in SoI, or does it again just up the stakes with resolving the ambiguity?

["Chimney Sweeper" in SoE might seem to tilt the balance in favor of the bleaker view; a religious vision looks pretty questionable when we realize that the chimney's sweeper's parents have abandoned him to go to church--specifically "to praise God & his Priest & King,/ who make up a heaven of our misery." But the chimney sweeper in SoI is a lot happier--which counts for a lot with a poet who is as insistent as Blake is that how you SEE things makes a difference. Which chimney sweeper is in "mind-forg'd manacles"?]

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Often, the degree to which a piece is ironic or note is a function of or at least connected to the issue of who the narrator is. Even in "Death of Dr. Swift," in which Swift is talking about himself, alluding to actual incidents in his life, he still adopts a persona which we are supposed to see through. The speaker of "Tintern Abbey," however, even if he is a somewhat idealized version of Wordsworth, is surely not an ironic figure.

So let's consider the speakers of these poems. Some are characters in the poems (as in the SoI version of "The Chimney Sweeper") and these need to be addressed individually. Even those that are not, however, are set up as being spoken by a particular KIND of speaker.

Introduction to SoI:

• what's the speaker like?
• is the Piper ironized in any way?

Introduction to SoE:

• very complex narration, with an ambiguous syntax which is characteristic of Blake
• who is speaking? What's he like? What qualifies him to speak?
• who calls the lapsed soul? If the Word, then what is implied? If the bard, then what?
• who might control the starry pole? if the Soul, then what? If the Word, then what?
• who speaks in the quotation marks? is the speaker presented ironically?

"Earth's Answer"

• does this poem help clarify the preceding one?
• if evil is the problem, who does the Word blame it on? who does Earth blame it on? What is the bard's position?