Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment: The Politics of Apotheosis

348 Pages·2017·6.532 MB·English

by  David Fallon (auth.)

DAVID FALLON
Blake, Myth, and
Enlightenment
The Politics of Apotheosis
Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment
David Fallon
Blake, Myth, and
Enlightenment
The Politics of Apotheosis
David Fallon
University of Sunderland, UK
ISBN 978-1-137-39034-9 ISBN 978-1-137-39035-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39035-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957727
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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Cover illustration: William Blake after Henry Fuseli, The Fertilization of Egypt. From
Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden (London: J. Johnson, 1791).
Printed on acid-free paper
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A
cknowledgements
This monograph began as a doctoral thesis supervised by Professor Jon
Mee, whose critical acumen, generosity, knowledge, encouragement, and
humour, both during and after the doctorate, have been inspiring. My
examiners Saree Makdisi and Fiona Stafford astutely identified areas need-
ing development. Rigorous comments from Palgrave’s reader forced me
to sharpen my argument, engage further with recent Blake criticism, and
clarify important issues.
I was lucky enough to receive an Arts and Humanities Research
Council doctoral award that made the project possible, and was assisted
in doctoral research with contributions from the University College Old
Members’ Trust and the English Faculty Meyerstein Fund. I carried out
additional work during a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at St
Anne’s College, Oxford. I am grateful to the Faculty of Education and
Society and the Culture and Regional Studies Beacon at the University of
Sunderland, which provided some much-needed marking relief during the
final revisions.
At University College, Oxford, I was fortunate to study alongside a
sociable cohort of doctoral students, with whom I enjoyed visits to The
Gardener’s Arms on Plantation Road. Mark Crosby, David O’Shaughnessy,
and Nandini Pandey all provided advice on this project. In Newcastle,
Claudine Van Hensbergen and Anton Caruana Galizia, Eliza O’Brien and
David Stewart, as well as the North East Forum in Eighteenth-Century
and Romantic Studies, have been great company and helped keep me in
touch with research.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m grateful to students at Oxford, Warwick, Bath ASE, and Sunderland,
during whose teaching many ideas bubbled up or simmered away. Thanks
to staff at the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the British Museum,
Cambridge University Library, the Huntington Library, Newcastle
Lit and Phil, Newcastle University Library, Tate Britain, the Society of
Antiquaries, and Sunderland University Library. Sadly Vera Ryhajlo, who
cheered my days in the Bodleian, cannot see the finished product.
My work benefited from many people’s generous help. They include:
Kate Barush, Helen Bruder, Luisa Calè, Steve Clark, Pamela Clemit,
Tristanne Connolly, Penelope Corfield, Keri Davies, Leon Day, Hermione
de Almeida, Sibylle Erle, Robert Essick, Mary Fairclough, Michael
Farrell, Joe Fletcher, Kevin Gilmartin, James Grande, Edmund Green,
Sarah Haggarty, Tim Heath and the Blake Society, Holger Hoock, Gavin
Hopps, Sebastian Kalhat-Pocicovic, Andrew Lambert, Kristin Lindfield-
Ott, Jeff Mertz, Dudley North, Karen O’Brien, Bronwyn Ormsby, Alex
Pheby, Michael Phillips, Chris Rowland, Jon Roberts, Jon Shears, Nick
Shrimpton, Susan Sklar, Angela Smith, Kate Tunstall, Susan Valladares,
Caroline Warman, Tim Webb, Andy Wells, Jason Whittaker, Angus
Whitehead, and David Worrall.
The editorial team at Palgrave were magnificently supportive. Ben
Doyle and Tomas René showed incredible patience as I struggled to finish
the manuscript in trying circumstances. Sections of the text appeared in
early form in Eighteenth-Century Life, Literature Compass, and Blake and
Conflict, and I am grateful to the editors and anonymous readers for their
advice. Jon Mee, David O’Shaughnessy, and Susan Matthews provided
helpful comments on draft chapters and gave much-needed pointers and
reassurance. Errors in the book are my own, or those of my poor Spectre.
Thanks to my family, Mum, Dad, Geraint, and Bethan, for all their
love, encouragement, inspiration, and support over the years. It has been
a pleasure to be accepted into a second family: Günter, Claudia, Ruth, and
Florian Gottmann. Finally, I dedicate the book to the wonderful Felicia
Gottmann, whose love and friendship enlighten every day. Clio Fallon
leapt into the dangerous world whilst I was finishing the book: sweet joy
befall thee!
c
ontents
1 Introduction: ‘A Saint Amongst the Infidels & a 
Heretic with the Orthodox’ 1
2 ‘The Deep Indelible Stain’: Apotheosis in the Eighteenth
Century 31
3 ‘Spirits of Fire’: Ambiguous Figures in The French
Revolution 63
4 ‘Breathing! Awakening!’: Contesting and Transforming
Apotheosis in America a Prophecy 89
5 ‘The Night of Holy Shadows’: Europe and Loyalist
Reaction 123
6 ‘Serpentine Dissimulation’: Apotheosis in Urizen,
Ahania, and The Song of Los 163
7 ‘The Name of the Wicked Shall Rot’: Blake’s Oriental
Apotheoses of Nelson and Pitt 193
vii
viii CONTENTS
8 Transforming Apotheosis in The Four Zoas and Milton 225
9 ‘Ever Expanding in the Bosom of God’: Deification
and Apotheosis in Jerusalem 251
10 Conclusion 285
Bibliography 299
Index 325
A
bbreviAtions
BB G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
BD S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973
[1965].
BIB Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
BMC Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the Department of Prints
and Drawings in the British Museum. Edited by Fredrick George
Stephens and M. Dorothy George, 11 vols. London: 1870–1954.
Caricatures are identified by the catalogue number.
BPAE David V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire, 3rd ed. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1977 [1954].
BR G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2004.
BT Leslie Tannenbaum, Biblical Tradition in Blake’s Early Prophecies: The
Great Code of Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.
CP The Continental Prophecies, William Blake’s Illuminated Books, vol. 4.
Edited by Detlef W. Dörrbecker. London: William Blake Trust and Tate
Gallery, 1998.
DE Jon Mee, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of
Radicalism in the 1790s. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
E The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake. Edited by David
V. Erdman with Commentary by Harold Bloom, rev. ed. New York:
Anchor, 1988 [1965].
ix
x ABBREVIATIONS
EI Morton Paley, Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the Development
of Blake’s Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.
FS Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1969 [1947].
IB David V. Erdman, The Illuminated Blake: William Blake’s Complete
Illuminated Works with a Plate-by-plate Commentary, red. ed. New York:
Dover, 1992 [1974].
J Jerusalem, William Blake’s Illuminated Books, vol. 1. Edited by Morton
D. Paley. London: William Blake Trust and Tate Gallery, 1996.
M Milton, William Blake’s Illuminated Books, vol. 5. Edited by Joseph
Viscomi and Robert Essick. London: William Blake Trust and Tate
Gallery, 1998.
N The Notebook of William Blake: A Photographic and Typographic
Facsimile. Edited by David V. Erdman and Donald K. Moore. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973.
PD The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake. Edited by Martin Butlin,
2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Numbers for Volume
I refer to images rather than catalogue entries, while those for Volume
II refer to the commentary page numbers.
RM The Riverside Milton. Edited by Roy Flanagan. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1998. All quotations from Milton are from this edition.
UB The Urizen Books, William Blake’s Illuminated Books, vol. 6. Edited by
David Worrall. London: William Blake Trust and Tate Gallery, 1998.