Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy

Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy PDF Author: Sibylle Erle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351193694
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"William Blake never travelled to the continent, yet his creation myth is far more European than has ever been acknowledged. The painter Henry Fuseli introduced Blake to traditional European thinking, and Blake responded to late 18th century body-theory in his Urizen books (1794-95), which emerged from his professional work as a copy-engraver on Henry Hunter's translation of Johann Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (1789-98). Lavater's work contains hundreds of portraits and their physiognomical readings. Blake, Fuseli, Joshua Reynolds and their contemporaries took a keen interest in the ideas behind physiognomy in their search for the right balance between good likeness and type in portraits. Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy demonstrates how the problems occurring during the production of the Hunter translation resonate in Blake's treatment of the Genesis story. Blake takes us back to the creation of the human body, and interrogates the idea that 'God created man after his own likeness.' He introduces the 'Net of Religion', a device which presses the human form into material shape, giving it personality and identity. As Erle shows, Blake's startlingly original take on the creation myth is informed by Lavater's pursuit of physiognomy: the search for divine likeness, traced in the faces of their contemporary men."

Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy

Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy PDF Author: Sibylle Erle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351193694
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"William Blake never travelled to the continent, yet his creation myth is far more European than has ever been acknowledged. The painter Henry Fuseli introduced Blake to traditional European thinking, and Blake responded to late 18th century body-theory in his Urizen books (1794-95), which emerged from his professional work as a copy-engraver on Henry Hunter's translation of Johann Caspar Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (1789-98). Lavater's work contains hundreds of portraits and their physiognomical readings. Blake, Fuseli, Joshua Reynolds and their contemporaries took a keen interest in the ideas behind physiognomy in their search for the right balance between good likeness and type in portraits. Blake, Lavater, and Physiognomy demonstrates how the problems occurring during the production of the Hunter translation resonate in Blake's treatment of the Genesis story. Blake takes us back to the creation of the human body, and interrogates the idea that 'God created man after his own likeness.' He introduces the 'Net of Religion', a device which presses the human form into material shape, giving it personality and identity. As Erle shows, Blake's startlingly original take on the creation myth is informed by Lavater's pursuit of physiognomy: the search for divine likeness, traced in the faces of their contemporary men."

Essays on Physiognomy

Essays on Physiognomy PDF Author: Johann Caspar Lavater
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Physiognomy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Essays on Physiognomy

Essays on Physiognomy PDF Author: Johann Caspar Lavater
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Facial expression
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description


Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism

Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism PDF Author: Stephanie O'Rourke
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316519023
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Innovative, alternative account of romanticism, exploring how art and science together contested the evidentiary authority of the human body.

The Reception of Blake in the Orient

The Reception of Blake in the Orient PDF Author: Steve Clark
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441143432
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
This volume brings together research from international scholars focusing attention on the longevity and complexity of Blake`s reception in Japan and elsewhere in the East. It is designed as not only a celebration of his art and poetry in new and unexpected contexts but also to contest the intensely nationalistic and parochial Englishness of his work, and in broader terms, the inevitable passivity with which Romanticism (and other Western intellectual movements) have been received in the Orient.

Physiognomy, Or, The Corresponding Analogy Between the Conformation of the Features and the Ruling Passions of the Mind

Physiognomy, Or, The Corresponding Analogy Between the Conformation of the Features and the Ruling Passions of the Mind PDF Author: Johann Caspar Lavater
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Face
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Beastly Blake

Beastly Blake PDF Author: Helen P. Bruder
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319897888
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Blake’s ‘Human Form Divine’ has long commanded the spotlight. Beastly Blake shifts focus to the non-human creatures who populate Blake’s poetry and designs. The author of ‘The Tyger’ and ‘The Lamb’ was equally struck by the ‘beastliness’ and the beauty of the animal kingdom, the utter otherness of animal subjectivity and the meaningful relationships between humans and other creatures. ‘Conversing with the Animal forms of wisdom night & day’, Blake fathomed how much they have to teach us about creation and eternity. This collection ranges from real animals in Blake’s surroundings, to symbolic creatures in his mythology, to animal presences in his illustrations of Virgil, Dante, Hayley, and Stedman. It makes a third to follow Queer Blake and Sexy Blake in irreverently illuminating blind spots in Blake criticism. Beastly Blake will reward lovers of Blake’s writing and visual art, as well as those interested in Romanticism and animal studies.

Blake's Margins

Blake's Margins PDF Author: Hazard Adams
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455470
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Known for his prophetic and imaginative works of poetry, painting, and printmaking, William Blake was also a prolific reader and annotator of other writers' works. This is the first work of criticism to consider Blake's annotations in their entirety, and it covers such topics as art, poetry, theology, madness and philosophy, as well as the authors Lavater, Swedenborg, Bacon, Spurzheim, Berkeley, and Wordsworth, among others.

Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment

Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment PDF Author: David Fallon
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137390352
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This book provides compelling new readings of William Blake’s poetry and art, including the first sustained account of his visionary paintings of Pitt and Nelson. It focuses on the recurrent motif of apotheosis, both as a figure of political authority to be demystified but also as an image of utopian possibility. It reevaluates Blake’s relationship to Enlightenment thought, myth, religion, and politics, from The French Revolution to Jerusalem and The Laocoön. The book combines careful attention to cultural and historical contexts with close readings of the texts and designs, providing an innovative account of Blake’s creative transformations of Enlightenment, classical, and Christian thought.

Blake's Drama

Blake's Drama PDF Author: Diane Piccitto
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137378018
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Blake's Drama challenges conventional views of William Blake's multimedia work by reinterpreting it as theatrical performance. Viewed in its dramatic contexts, this art form is shown to provoke an active spectatorship and to depict identity as paradoxically essential and constructed, revealing Blake's investments in drama, action, and the body.