Blake. Wordsworth. Religion.
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Paperback / softback
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Publisher: Continuum Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9780826425027
Number of Pages: 144
Published: 17/03/2011
Width: 13.8 cm
Height: 21.6 cm
This title features new scholarship informed by both historicist and metaphysical approaches, offering original readings of the poetry of Blake and Wordsworth and their reception. The history of responses to the works of William Wordsworth and William Blake can be divided into those who have tried to enact their poetry, and those who have tried to categorize it. The 'enactors' have themselves often been artists (Felicia Hemans, the pre-Raphaelites, William Hale White, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg); the 'categorizers' - those who have attempted to systematize, theologize, and more recently historicize the poetry - have tended to be academics. The two types of response provide a polarity of the sort that Blake termed 'producers and devourers'. The reception of the two poets is riven by this conflict which provokes the strongest feeling. But which side is right? In addressing this question, Jonathan Roberts takes a leaf from Blake's own book and interrelates the two sides dialectically.
Introduction; 1. Blake, Wordsworth and Enlightenment divisions of experience; 2. The Fragmented Self; 3. Dialectical Humanism; 4. Romantic Religion; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
"Focusing on the work of Blake and Wordsworth, Jonathan Roberts's fine study takes us on a hermeneutical journey that underscores the complex nature of religious experience. As it correlates a wide range of interpretive approaches (autobiographical, historical, theological and the like), this is a book that will find a large and diverse readership not only among students of literature but among all those interested in what it means to read a poem or a set of poems as the expression of a 'religious' sensibility."--Sanford Lakoff