Essay on "Romantic Literature 1st Blog Page"

Essay 3 pages (1109 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Romantic Literature

1st Blog Page

In the first blog page, this author will summarize the Book of Urizen by Blake as an archetype. This "book" which is a parody of the biblical Book of Genesis is named for the character Urizen in Blake's mythology. Urizen represents humanity's alienated reason as the source of its oppression. Blake describes Urizen as the "primeval priest" and explains how he came to be separated from all the other Eternals. Due to this, he creates his own alienated and enslaved realm of religious dogma. The characters Los and Enitharmon both are able to create a space within Urizen's fallen universe in order to give birth to their son Orc who represents the spirit of revolution and freedom (Blake, and Grant, 140-144). Although Frye in our text does not make mention of it, in the opinion of this author, it reminds them of the Genesis Apocryphon since it seems more Gnostic in form since Urizen appears more similar to the demiurge of the Gnostics than to a benevolent creator that we see in the Judeo-Christian tradition ("Bibliotecapleyades.net").

The unique archetype literally runs in Urizen's family as we see in the Book of Ahania. It was produced by Blake at the same time as produced the Book of Los. In this book, we meet Ahania, Urizen's son in the midst of the rebellion of another son, Fuzon. The creation story is essentially retold according to Ahania's telling of the story and from his viewpoint (ibid, 160). Certainly, one can not but be stunned by the parallel with the rebellion of Lucifer against God in the Bible ("McDonald Road.org") .

This would mean that he is not totally beholden to the traditions of the Bible. However, Frye goes on to comment that it could simply be that such unconventionality may simply be to the huge size of Blake's intellect. He had a very comprehensive knowledge of the world and his creation of a primeval "eternal" character such as Urizen could simply be his own poetic creation that fits in no standard existing archetype that existed before he put the book of Urizen to pen and ink. Indeed, in this vein one may see parallels with Dante, which would certainly mean no attack on Christian orthodoxy (ibid).

2nd Blog Page

In Milton, its hero is naturally, John Milton. In the story Milton returns from heaven and joins forces with Blake to explore the relationship between living writers and their predecessors in the craft. In addition, they undergo a mystical journey to correct Blake's own spiritual errors (ibid, 234).

The apocryphal musings of Blake bring us to Harold Bloom. Rather than focusing on Blake's work as an archetype, Bloom raises a much more basic thematic question, namely what is the purpose of literature anyway? In other words, the overarching theme of all Blake's greatest work was where he explored the heavenly visions, determining that one cannot remain there, but then must return to earth. The purpose is to analyze this literature and then influence the outside society. While this question may seem to be obvious it has not particularly been one with which twentieth century criticism has concerned itself very much. Rather, most critics have just asked what literature is rather than probing its foundational purpose. In this vein, British criticism has usually been… READ MORE

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