This thesis attempts to focus on William Blake as an English prophet, to see how Blake reveals the corruption and hypocrisy of his society and investigate how Blake suggests the ideal 'New Age'. In Blake's time, England was prosperous, but it was not a country of liberty in terms of the spiritual re...
This thesis attempts to focus on William Blake as an English prophet, to see how Blake reveals the corruption and hypocrisy of his society and investigate how Blake suggests the ideal 'New Age'. In Blake's time, England was prosperous, but it was not a country of liberty in terms of the spiritual realm. Its real circumstances were incongruent with his ideal of nation. The spiritual corruption was mainly derived from the desolation of human nature, that it is selfhood which destroys harmonious relationship. Blake tried to express the new world passing through innocence and experience. His major theme is suggested in his subtitle to The Songs of Innocence and Experience "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". The contraries are necessary for progression of the human soul's development. In Songs of Innocence, Blake first presents an image of the child's pitiable condition in the world, then an image of the loving guardian who brings him peace and finally an image of the "Divine Vision" which that guardianship has nurtured. In this world, human nature is good and virtuous, and God resides in human beings. There are joy, pity, mercy, peace and love. But, this world will change into one corrupted by reason. Song of Experience is filled with negative, Urizenic values. Urizen is a symbol of Reason. It was an only value in the Age of Reason, and paralyzed wide-ranging realms of 18th-century England. This world is ruled by laws and deist ethics. This is a world of manacles and chains, secret joys, selfish cruel fathers, hypocrisy, jealousy and thwarted virgins. There are also pain, grief and sorrow in man's life. Children, a symbol of innocence, were abandoned by their parents, isolated from society and treated as a means of sweated labor. Their body and spirit were not welcomed by the church. Blake spoke of the new age to society's fallen people of his day. Blake knew that he was the messenger to his nation from the higher and inner worlds. So he strove to awaken the national consciousness to the vision he himself so clearly beheld. He suggested a new kind of action. It is the change of an individual's inner mind, not an external revolution. That world is not a tangible place, but a world that people could get to by the enlargement of their consciousness. Also it is an endeavour to restore what the ancients called the 'Golden Age'. For him, the means to solve the problems caused by selfhood were divine image and universal brotherhood. They can function as the fundamentals principle for operating new society.
This thesis attempts to focus on William Blake as an English prophet, to see how Blake reveals the corruption and hypocrisy of his society and investigate how Blake suggests the ideal 'New Age'. In Blake's time, England was prosperous, but it was not a country of liberty in terms of the spiritual realm. Its real circumstances were incongruent with his ideal of nation. The spiritual corruption was mainly derived from the desolation of human nature, that it is selfhood which destroys harmonious relationship. Blake tried to express the new world passing through innocence and experience. His major theme is suggested in his subtitle to The Songs of Innocence and Experience "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". The contraries are necessary for progression of the human soul's development. In Songs of Innocence, Blake first presents an image of the child's pitiable condition in the world, then an image of the loving guardian who brings him peace and finally an image of the "Divine Vision" which that guardianship has nurtured. In this world, human nature is good and virtuous, and God resides in human beings. There are joy, pity, mercy, peace and love. But, this world will change into one corrupted by reason. Song of Experience is filled with negative, Urizenic values. Urizen is a symbol of Reason. It was an only value in the Age of Reason, and paralyzed wide-ranging realms of 18th-century England. This world is ruled by laws and deist ethics. This is a world of manacles and chains, secret joys, selfish cruel fathers, hypocrisy, jealousy and thwarted virgins. There are also pain, grief and sorrow in man's life. Children, a symbol of innocence, were abandoned by their parents, isolated from society and treated as a means of sweated labor. Their body and spirit were not welcomed by the church. Blake spoke of the new age to society's fallen people of his day. Blake knew that he was the messenger to his nation from the higher and inner worlds. So he strove to awaken the national consciousness to the vision he himself so clearly beheld. He suggested a new kind of action. It is the change of an individual's inner mind, not an external revolution. That world is not a tangible place, but a world that people could get to by the enlargement of their consciousness. Also it is an endeavour to restore what the ancients called the 'Golden Age'. For him, the means to solve the problems caused by selfhood were divine image and universal brotherhood. They can function as the fundamentals principle for operating new society.
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