Abstract
dc:description.abstractThis thesis discusses the place of lowness in Blake’s corpus. It examines his inclusion of elements of the artless, the vulgar, the unlettered, the popular, the bathetic, not as lapses in poetic ability but as ways of challenging prevailing aesthetic and intellectual values from below. It traces Blake’s deliberate and unabashed use of lowness across his verbal and visual work simultaneously, closely reading its manifestation in different forms, modes, materials, and registers. The thesis makes two central and interrelated arguments: that Blake uses lowly cultural forms in his art as art, not merely as historical curiosities or momentarily indulged deviations; and that, despite this artistic impulse, Blake neither refines nor recuperates these forms because it is precisely from their depths that they gain a political or prophetic force. His refusal is an act of defiance. Blake’s lowness subverts perceived errors of bourgeois learning and taste, gestures towards a democratised community of readers, and embodies his prophesied immanence. Whilst these ends have lofty aims, they can only be achieved through the lowliness of Blake’s means. Each chapter examines a different type of lowness as it surfaces in Blake’s corpus, from canonical poems and familiar paintings to manuscript jottings and commercial hack work. Chapter 1 examines the unruly vigour of Blake’s laughter and its gradual harnessing as an interpersonal force through the form of song. Chapter 2 discusses the parallels between Blake’s composite art and popular pantomime, arguing that he uses the techniques of visual culture to render his transcendent visions visible. Chapter 3 attends to the contents of Blake’s Notebook and other draft works, considering their material status, obscene content, and poetic form as fitting articulations of his attacks on artistic institutions. Through a sustained close reading, chapter 4 understands The [First] Book of Urizen as an anti-sublime creation which uses a bathetic register to parody and exhaust perceived philosophical and aesthetic faults of the period. Finally, chapter 5 discusses Blake’s inheritance and reuse of fairy lore through which he forges his own poetic lineage and widens his syncretic project. Blake’s art does not blend, efface, and reprocess the low; rather it forges a radically inclusive register which is a formalisation of his larger prophetic vision.
Degree
thesis:*- Name dc:type.qualificationname
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Level dc:type.qualificationlevel
- Doctoral
- Grantor dc:publisher.institution
- University of Cambridge
- Year dc:date.issued
- 2024
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Hutchings, Ruby
- Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
-
- Haggarty, Sarah
Subjects
dc:subject × 8Rights
dc:rightsIdentifiers
dc:identifier.*- DOI dc:identifier.doi
- https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.121708
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/390005