William Blake的介绍（课堂PPT）

1、Born 28 November 1757)London, EnglandDied 12 August 1827) (aged 69)London, EnglandOccupation Writer(poet), painter, printmakerGenresVisionary, poetryLiterary movementRomanticismNotable work(s) Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Four Zoas, Jerusalem, Milton a P

2、oem, And did those feet in ancient timeSpouse(s) Catherine Blake (17821831) Life Point of view Main works and writing features Engravings General cultural influence Born in London on 28 November 1757 As a child ,he was already focused on imagination, the individual, and nature which are themes of th

3、e Romantic and Transcendental(超自然的) period. At the age 10,he was enrolled in Henry Pars drawing school. He was exposed to Greek and Roman sculpture, which influenced his later work. At the age of 14,he became an apprentice at an engraving business. As an engraver, he learned how to make copperplates

4、. that were used as surfaces for etchings. As he continued to develop his skill in visual arts, Black also developed his writing skills. In 1783 ,his first set of poems, Poetical Sketches, was published. The subject matter of his works were Romantic in their nature because they included discussion o

5、f nature religion,the individual ,and ideas from his own imagination. Blake died in 1827 Monument near Blakes unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields in London Politically Blake was a rebel, making friends with those radicals. He strongly criticized the capitalists cruel exploitation. He cherished great ex

6、pectations and enthusiasm for the French Revolution. He once said the dark satanic mills left men unpployed, killed children and forced prostitution. Literarily Blake was the first important romantic poet,showing contempt for the rule of reason,opposite the classical tradition of the 18th century, a

7、nd treauring the individuals imagination. 1 (1) The songs of Innocence (published in 1789) is a lovely volume poems, presenting a happy and innocent world, though not without its evil and sufferings. (2) The songs of Experience (published in 1794) paints a different world, a world of misery, poverty

8、, disease, war and repress with melancholy tone Style: The two books hold the similar subject-matter, but the tone, emphasis and conclusion differs. 第一本诗集第一本诗集Poetical Sketches Blakes Marriage of Heaven and Hell(1790) marks his entry into maturity. The Poem was composed during the change of French R

9、evolution and it plays the double role both as a satire and a revolutionary Prophecy. In this Poem, Blake explain the relationship of the contraries. Style: Blake writes his poem in plain and direct language ,his poem often carries the lyric beauty with immense compressing of meaning. He distrusts t

10、he abstractness and tend to embody his views with visual images, symbolism in wide range is also a distinctive feature of his poetry Although Blake has become most famous for his relief etching（蚀刻术）, his commercial work largely consisted of intaglio engraving（雕刻凹印）, the standard process of engraving

11、 in the eighteenth century in which the artist would incise（切） an image into the copper plate. This was a complex and laborious process, with plates taking months or years to complete, but as Blakes contemporary, John Boydell, realised, such engraving offered a missing link with commerce, enabling a

12、rtists to connect with a mass audience and so becoming an immensely important activity by the end of the eighteenth century. Blake also employed intaglio engraving in his own work, most notably for the illustrations of the Book of Job, completed just before his death. Most critical work has tended t

13、o concentrate on Blakes relief etching as a technique because it is the most innovative aspect of his art, but a 2009 study draws attention to Blakes surviving plates, including those for the Book of Job: these demonstrate that he made frequent use of a technique known as repoussage, a means of obli

14、terating mistakes by hammering them out by hitting the back of the plate. Such techniques, typical of engraving work of the time, are very different to the much faster and fluid way of drawing on a plate that Blake employed for his relief etching, and indicates why the engravings took so long to com

15、plete. The Night of Enitharmons Joy, 1795. Blakes vision of Hecate, Greek goddess of black magic and the underworldThe archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blakes work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a series of illu

16、minated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental Prophecies Blakes The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (1805) is one of a series of illustrations of Revelation Blakes work was neglected for a generation after his death and was almost forgotten when A

17、lexander Gilchrist began work on his biography in the 1860s. The publication of the Life of William Blake rapidly transformed Blakes reputation, in particular as he was taken up by Pre-Raphaelites and associated figures, in particular Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne. It was in

18、the twentieth century, however, that Blakes work was fully appreciated and his influence increased. Important early and mid twentieth-century scholars involved in enhancing Blakes standing in literary and artistic circles included S. Foster Damon, Geoffrey Keynes, Northrop Frye, David V. Erdman and

19、G. E. Bentley, Jr.William Blakes portrait in profile, by John Linnell. While Blake had a significant role to play in the art and poetry of figures such as Rossetti, it was during the Modernist period that this work began to influence a wider set of writers and artists. William Butler Yeats, who edit

20、ed an edition of Blakes collected works in 1893, drew on him for poetic and philosophical ideas, while British surrealist art in particular drew on Blakes conceptions of non-mimetic, visionary practice in the painting of artists such as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland.His poetry also came into use b

21、y a number of British classical composers such as Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who set his works. Modern British composer John Tavener has also set several of Blakes poems, including The Tyger and The Lamb. Blake had an enormous influence on the beat poets of the 1950s and the counte

22、rculture of the 1960s, frequently being cited by such seminal figures as beat poet Allen Ginsberg, songwriters Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Van Morrison, and English writer Aldous Huxley. Much of the central conceit of Phillip Pullmans fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials is rooted in the world of Blakes

23、The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. After World War II, Blakes role in popular culture has come to the fore in a variety of areas such as popular music, film, and the graphic novel, leading Edward Larrissy to assert that Blake is the Romantic writer who has exerted the most powerful influence on the tw

24、entieth century. In the poems “Holy Thursday,” by William Blake, one can see two completely different ideas. In the first poem, Blake tries to express an optimistic and hopeful image of innocent children singing to Christ on the day of ascension. The poems rhythm is playful and childish and effectiv

25、ely carries out Blakes image. In contrast, the second poem is negative and pessimistic and it questions the nature or existence of a God. The children are rejected and abused by society and they are exactly the opposite of the children in the first poem. In the first “Holy Thursday,” colorful childr

26、en are marching into St Pauls cathedral for the celebration of the ascension of Christ. From the footnote, one learns that these children are from the charity schools in London, meaning that they are very poor and probably dont have a family. Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,Came

27、children walking two and two, in read, and blue, and green:Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow.Oh what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.Now like a mighty wild they raise to heaven the voice of song,Or like