La concepción de un Dios antropomorfoeterno y universal en Swedenborg y William Blake

La complejidad que envuelve los mundos internos o espirituales del ser humano es un tema ampliamente discutido. De lo que no hay duda es de que toda persona consta de motivaciones individuales no perceptibles, y entre ellas, se encuentra la creencia en las divinidades y sus implicaciones. La manifestación literaria de las prácticas espirituales de naturaleza mística o visionaria constituyen una forma de acercar al lector a dicha experiencia.

O corpo como acesso ao divino na arte iluminada de William Blake

RESUMO William Blake tece, por toda a sua obra, ácidas críticas ao pensamento filosófico de matriz iluminista, em voga entre as classes letradas da Inglaterra do século XVIII, e contra a frequente associação do corpo a um invólucro impuro para alma imortal, leitura comum nas religiões de tradição cristã. Para o artista, a experiência do corpo, apresentado alternadamente como espiritual e material, representa a única via de acesso ao divino. Neste artigo, revisito a tradição crítica sobre as persistentes questões a respeito do corpo e seu papel no acesso humano ao divino presentes na arte iluminada de Blake; tenho o intuito de discutir a convergência politizada de diversas tradições místico-religiosas, filosóficas e artísticas na obra do artista, mantenho-me sensível às contradições geradas por esse processo de aproximação.

Embodied Visions in William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion

<p>William Blake characterised an abstract as “A murderer of its own Body,” an attempt to impose stable mastery on an unstable reality (E153). This thesis reads Blake’s illuminated poem, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, from the ‘unstable’ perspective of ‘Embodied Visions,’ based on the hypothesis that readings of the poem have often been distorted by the imposition of binary divisions: divisions that are undermined within the work itself. This approach to Visions of the Daughters of Albion is in three chapters: firstly aligning Blake’s work with Japanese manga artist Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), tracing the construction of Blake in Japan, and how this can occasion new perspectives; secondly I read Visions with Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, placing both texts in response to oppressive sexual prescriptions of the 1790s, in order to chart where they concur and diverge; and finally I examine the effect of dualistic critical frames on readings of Visions, arguing that we must read the sections exploring perception as continuous with the rest of the poem in order to appreciate Blake’s engagement with an embodied reality.</p>

Embodied Visions in William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion

<p>William Blake characterised an abstract as “A murderer of its own Body,” an attempt to impose stable mastery on an unstable reality (E153). This thesis reads Blake’s illuminated poem, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, from the ‘unstable’ perspective of ‘Embodied Visions,’ based on the hypothesis that readings of the poem have often been distorted by the imposition of binary divisions: divisions that are undermined within the work itself. This approach to Visions of the Daughters of Albion is in three chapters: firstly aligning Blake’s work with Japanese manga artist Tezuka Osamu (1928-1989), tracing the construction of Blake in Japan, and how this can occasion new perspectives; secondly I read Visions with Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, placing both texts in response to oppressive sexual prescriptions of the 1790s, in order to chart where they concur and diverge; and finally I examine the effect of dualistic critical frames on readings of Visions, arguing that we must read the sections exploring perception as continuous with the rest of the poem in order to appreciate Blake’s engagement with an embodied reality.</p>

William Blake: Neo-Platonist and Sexual Radical?

William Blake’s prophetic works seem to present the reader with a puzzling contradiction. On the one hand Blake can be read as a prophet of sexual revolution with his attacks on puritanism and hypocritical chastity. On the other hand, in many passages he seems to express characteristically Platonic/Patristic skepticism concerning bodily experience. What is more he often portrays sexuality and indeed femininity as manipulative and cruel. Is there a coherent attitude to sexuality in Blake? This paper argues that Blake’s soteriology strongly implies that the ‘return’ to unity with the divine pivots on the incarnation which Blake even insists is the product of natural sexuality. To this extent there is a place for the sexualized body in the economy of salvation. This economy links Blake to a larger Platonist and Christian Platonist tradition that understands salvation in terms of an exitus/reditus pattern.

"Shaping and Cutting and Improving and Adding": Acknowledged and Hidden Influences in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials

<p>This thesis aims to identify and analyse the most prominent influences on Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It looks particularly at the difference between the authors' attitude towards influences they happily acknowledge and those influences which they attempt to conceal because they cause them anxiety (in the case of Westerfeld) or embarrassment (in the case of Pullman). This focus, combined with the speculative analysis of His Dark Materials' influence on Extras, the fourth book of the Uglies series, is intended to show the variability of literary influence. Comparative close readings throughout the thesis display the variety of ways influences are used within the texts, and illustrate the factors on which their use is dependent: the compatibility of the latecomer text with its precursor, the author's opinion of the earlier work, and the reading the author makes of the precursor text. Pullman's acknowledgement of influences is dependent on whether he considers them worthy precursors (in the case of Heinrich von Kleist, William Blake, and John Milton) or an embarrassing ancestor (in the case of C. S. Lewis). Westerfeld's is dependent on how similar his precursor works are to his own texts, as he does not acknowledge the obvious influence of Aldous Huxley, but happily names Ray Bradbury, John Christopher, Ted Chiang, and Charles Beaumont as influences. The thesis shows that the use of literary influences is not straightforward as one author may, as Westerfeld and Pullman do, display different attitudes to and appropriate precursor texts in differing ways within one work.</p>

"Shaping and Cutting and Improving and Adding": Acknowledged and Hidden Influences in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials

<p>This thesis aims to identify and analyse the most prominent influences on Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. It looks particularly at the difference between the authors' attitude towards influences they happily acknowledge and those influences which they attempt to conceal because they cause them anxiety (in the case of Westerfeld) or embarrassment (in the case of Pullman). This focus, combined with the speculative analysis of His Dark Materials' influence on Extras, the fourth book of the Uglies series, is intended to show the variability of literary influence. Comparative close readings throughout the thesis display the variety of ways influences are used within the texts, and illustrate the factors on which their use is dependent: the compatibility of the latecomer text with its precursor, the author's opinion of the earlier work, and the reading the author makes of the precursor text. Pullman's acknowledgement of influences is dependent on whether he considers them worthy precursors (in the case of Heinrich von Kleist, William Blake, and John Milton) or an embarrassing ancestor (in the case of C. S. Lewis). Westerfeld's is dependent on how similar his precursor works are to his own texts, as he does not acknowledge the obvious influence of Aldous Huxley, but happily names Ray Bradbury, John Christopher, Ted Chiang, and Charles Beaumont as influences. The thesis shows that the use of literary influences is not straightforward as one author may, as Westerfeld and Pullman do, display different attitudes to and appropriate precursor texts in differing ways within one work.</p>

crianças de Salinger:

Resumo: O presente artigo procura demonstrar que há uma forte similaridade entre a maneira pela qual o escritor norte-americano J.D. Salinger construiu os vários personagens criança de Nine Stories (1953) – especialmente aquele nomeado Teddy – e a poética romântica da infância, inaugurada por autores ingleses como William Blake e William Wordsworth, onde a criança é representada como uma entidade sagrada, portadora de uma pureza e sabedoria celestiais. Para tanto, operamos uma análise direta dos contos de Salinger – pela qual exploramos suas personagens e técnicas literárias –, mas também uma ampla revisão bibliográfica que visa rastrear os motivos que levaram ao surgimento dessa poética literária da infância no século XVIII e sua continuidade até o século XX, além de identificar algumas das interinfluências das doutrinas filosóficas, teológicas e psicanalíticas que debateram a infância durante os últimos séculos. Desta forma, o presente artigo transita por questões como: desenvolvimento e educação infantil, o pecado original, inocência, experiência social e mundana, pureza de intenções e estado natural, iluminação espiritual, Salvação Cristã e Nirvana Zen-Budista. Elementos que se vinculam à sacralização da infância operada por diversos autores de textos literários, a exemplo de Blake, Wordsworth e, claro, Salinger.