Blake and Lucretius

This book demonstrates the way in which William Blake aligned his idiosyncratic concept of the Selfhood the lens through which the despiritualised subject beholds the material world with the atomistic materialism of the Epicurean school as it was transmitted through the first-century BC Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius' De Rerum Natura . By addressing this philosophical debt, this study sets out a threefold re-evaluation of Blake's work: to clarify the classical stream of Blake's philosophical heritage through Lucretius; to return Blake to his historical moment, a thirty-year period from 1790 to 1820 which has been described as the second Lucretian moment in England; and to employ a new exegetical model for understanding the phenomenological parameters and epistemological frameworks of Blake's mythopoeia. Accordingly, it is revealed that Blake was not only aware of classical atomistic cosmogony and sense-based epistemology but that he systematically mapped postlapsarian existence onto an Epicurean framework.

Explores the Epicurean legacy in William Blake's work Shows that Blake was deeply influenced by Lucretian materialism Offers new insights into the reception of Lucretius across Europe from the seventeenth century onwards

Auteur

Joshua Schouten de Jel is a recent doctoral graduate from the University of Plymouth, UK. He is the author of articles on William Blake, Mary Shelley, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Contenu

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The Epicurean and Lucretian Slur: Francis Bacon.- Chapter 3: The Epicurean and Lucretian Slur: Isaac Newton.- Chapter 4: Simulacra and the Selfhood.- Chapter 5: Urizenic Phantasiae.- Chapter 6: The Cosmic Chains of the Machina Mundi.