Healing the Spirit: William Blake and Magnetic Religion

2009 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Robert W. Rix
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Spiritual Health ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
New Jerusalem ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Animal Magnetism

Abstract In the late eighteenth century, Swedenborg-inspired mystics transformed the pseudo-science of Animal Magnetism, popularized by Franz Anton Mesmer, into a mystical religion of restoring mankind to spiritual health and preparing the Millennium. The essay progresses chronologically to trace Blake's intellectual companionship with this renegade branch of Magnetism in relation to the development of some central metaphors and narrative structures in his works. Especially prominent with the Swedenborgian magnetizers practicing in London were ideas of "healing" by means of communication with spirits from beyond. This, however, met staunch opposition from the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church—the only religious organization with which we know Blake to have been affiliated. The more conservative clerics here launched a campaign banishing all experimentation with Spiritualism and the occult interpretations of Swedenborg that held sway among the mystical magnetizers. The article examines Blake's well-known support of Spiritualism in relation to this local dispute, as this contributes to solve the long-standing mystery of why Blake suddenly fell out with New Jerusalem Church at this time and launched a virulent attack on Swedenborg in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

scholarly journals Visions of the Daughters of Albion: The Influence of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Life and Career on William Blake

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
Ramin Keshavarzian ◽  
Pyeaam Abbasi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

The present study discussed the influence of one of the eighteenth-century British women of color, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, on William Blake. By adopting a biographical and also a comparative approach, the authors tried to highlight the influences of Wollstonecraft‟s personal life, character, and career, chiefly her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), on one of William Blake‟s less-referred-to poems Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793). The study will help readers to both know Wollstonecraft‟s prominence and also to grasp more of William Blake and his poetry. The authors also attempted to show that William Blake was part of the early feminism of the late eighteenth century.

Slavery and Ransom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Law

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.

Historical Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter looks at historical romance. Late eighteenth-century historiography began to expand its purview to unofficial spheres of social, cultural, and private life typically cultivated by informal genres such as memoirs, biographies, and novels. The ‘matter’ of history was being increasingly redefined, and this had two key effects that bear on the question of historical romance. First, the ‘reframing’ of the historical field generated a marked reciprocity among the different historical genres in the literary field, as they borrowed material and tactics from one another; second, it led to a splintering albeit not displacement of ‘general’ history, as new branches of history writing took shape, notably that of literary history as a distinct form of history. Hence romance now denoted not only the realm of ‘fancy’ but a superseded literary form of renewed interest in the rethinking of the national past.

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