We turn to literature and to art to help us define our world. Great literature and great art live beyond their own day because they answer not only the need and impulse of the days in which they were crafted, but because they continue to speak to a modern audience--perhaps in a different register or tone, but continuing to address a vital human need, filling an emotional void or addressing an inherent aesthetic. Being removed from the time in which a particular work was created presents a multitude of difficulties. One school of critics argues that we cannot hope to understand a work unless we first consider the historical moment in which it was created, looking for historical and biographical clues to the artist in the work. Other critics assert that the only way to approach a work of art--visual or literary--is to take the work solely on its own terms, disregarding its context or the experience of the artist. The poetic and artistic work of William Blake must synthesize both approaches. We can view his illuminations and respond to the imagery with a sense of transcendence. However, we lose a fair amount of import if we fail to look closely at the context in which Blake worked. Blake lived on a "faultline" of "ascendant modernity, along which values can be radically transformed" (Myrone 34). On that faultline is where we find the poet as prophet, as the voice crying in a wilderness, as the teller of truth to power.
The Hanoverian image was one of rationality and moderation (Myrone), but the veneer was cracked. Not far beneath the surface was a seething mass of unrest--intellectual, social, and political. Many of Blake's companions were radical thinkers, like Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine, whom Blake had met through h...
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Eaves, Morris, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, eds. The William Blake Archive. Lib of Cong., 22 June 2010. Web. 25 Aug. 2010.
Fairer, David. “Experience Reading Innocence: Contextualizing Blake’s ‘Holy Thursday’.” Eighteenth-Century Studies Summer 2002: 536-562. JSTOR. Web. 17 Aug. 2010.
"Flour Milling and the port: Milling by steam." PortCities London. Portcities. 27 July 2010. Web.
Myrone, Martin. Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination. London: Tate Publishing. 2006.
Pollen, John Hungerford. "Gordon Riots." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 26 Jul. 2010. Web.
Thompson, E.P. Witnessing Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law. Cambridge UP. 1993.
Wright, Julia M. Blake, Nationalism and the Politics of Alienation. Athens OH: Ohio UP. 2004. eBook.
...ed a clear authority for the death of Gaius Gracchus and his actions (Boatwright, Gargola, Lenski, and Talbert 2013: 92). The Senate desired Gaius’s death to place a stop to the continued strikes against the current system. During the purse of Gaius, he committed suicide and three thousand supporters died along with him.
The astonishingly brilliant artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes has always been revered and adored for his incredible paintings of the Spanish Royal family, but not many know that he was also a masterful engraver. In the exhibit titled Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain, many of the pieces displayed were based on social commentary of the period within the country. This disdain is particularly palpable in the etching by Goya titled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. The psychological and emotional state of Goya at the time is masterfully rendered and the presentation of the exhibit is absolutely remarkable due to its brilliant color scheme and expert presentation of the works.
Goya amazingly captures feelings of fear and sadness through pose, and expression as those waiting to die either watch with hands clasped in horror or cover their faces, unable to look at the slaughter before them.
The nature of the Southern Plains soils and the periodic influence of drought could not be changed, but the technological abuse of the land could have been stopped. This is not to say that mechanized agriculture irreparably damaged the land-it did not. New and improved implements such as tractors, one-way disk plows, grain drills, and combines reduced plowing, planting, and harvesting costs and increased agricultural productivity. Increased productivity caused prices to fall, and farmers compensated by breaking more sod for wheat. At the same time, farmers gave little thought to using their new technology in ways to conserve the
The theme of the suffering innocent person, dying and being diseased, throws a dark light onto the London seen through the eyes of William Blake. He shows us his experiences, fears and hopes with passionate images and metaphors creating a sensibility against oppression hypocrisy. His words come alive and ask for changes in society, government and church. But they remind us also that the continued renewal of society begins with new ideas, imagination and new works in every area of human experience.
The Liberal Spanish Court Painter, Francisco De Goya can be considered one of the most influential figures in Spanish art of the mid 18th, and early 19th Century. Goya had a lot of success early on, He became the Court painter to the Spanish Aristocracy, and after displaying his mastery became painter to the king in 1786. Francisco De Goya became one of the keen observers of the tragedies of war, in 1792 he fell victim to a mysterious illness, which almost killed him, and left him completely deaf. A mixture of the violence occurring in Spain at this time, and the loss of his hearing disillusioned this once optimistic court painter, and lead him to create arguably his most famous paintings. These paintings, Known as Goya’s Black paintings were unlike any other art in Spain at this time. They showed the realities of war from an unfiltered perspective, and were effectively able to transmit Goya’s disgust and disillusionment with Napoleon’s invasion, and general bloodshed in Spain at this time. In this essay I will describe aspects of Goya’s personal life, the significance of his work, and Goya’s reaction to different problems occurring in Spain at this time.
William Blake, was born in 1757 and died in 1827, created the poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell. Blake grew up in a poor environment. He studied to become an Engraver and a professional artist. His engraving took part in the Romanticism era. The Romanticism is a movement that developed during the 18th and early 19th century as a reaction against the Restoration and Enlightenment periods focuses on logic and reason. Blake’s poetry would focus on imagination. When Blake created his work, it gained very little attention. Blake’s artistic and poetic vision consists in his creations. Blake was against the Church of England because he thought the doctrines were being misused as a form of social control, it meant the people were taught to be passively obedient and accept oppression, poverty, and inequality. In Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell, he shows that good requires evil in order to exist through imagery animals and man.
William Blake is remembered by his poetry, engravements, printmaking, and paintings. He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain on November 28, 1757. William was the third of seven siblings, which two of them died from infancy. As a kid he didn’t attend school, instead he was homeschooled by his mother. His mother thought him to read and write. As a little boy he was always different. Most kids of his age were going to school, hanging out with friends, or just simply playing. While William was getting visions of unusual things. At the age of four he had a vision of god and when he was nine he had another vision of angles on trees.
Nurmi, Martin K. "Joy, Love, and Innocence in Blake's “The Mental Traveller"" William Blake: The Politics of Vision (1946): 81-82. Web
The question of free will has been around for ages and philosopher have taken sides. There are philosophers who do believe that humans have free will that we have choices, we control our lives, etc. and same as those philosophers I firmly believe that humans have free will.
Blake qtd in Raine, Kathleen. Blake and the New Age. George Allen and Unwin, London: 1979.
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
The theme of authority is possibly the most important theme and the most popular theme concerning William Blake’s poetry. Blake explores authority in a variety of different ways particularly through religion, education and God. Blake was profoundly concerned with the concept of social justice. He was also profoundly a religious man. His dissenting background led him to view the power structures and legalism that surrounded religious establishments with distrust. He saw these as unwarranted controls over the freedom of the individual and contrary to the nature of a God of liberty. Figures such as the school master in the ‘schoolboy’, the parents in the ‘chimney sweeper’ poems, the guardians of the poor in the ‘Holy Thursday’, Ona’s father in ‘A Little girl lost’ and the priestly representatives of organised religion in many of the poems, are for Blake the embodiment of evil restriction.
William Blake composed two series of poems: Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence. The poems are intertwined as to compare the thoughts of children and adults on the same issues. The innocence of children is discussed on topics of religion, love, and justice. The opinions of adults are also experienced on these topics, but are given from a more experienced viewpoint. William Blake comparatively writes two series of poems to address the controversy of God, love, and justice from pure thinkers and from corrupt thinkers.
As pointed by Parsons A.L (2002), there was increasing dependent on the relationship and customers is demanding to receive high standard of products and services for them to sustain the business in the intense manufacturing environment. Besides, Xu et al. (2008) has highlighted that supplier is developing a long-term relationship with their crucial suppliers to increase the competitiveness and to establish an effective and efficient supply chain. Trend (2005) also mentioned that work closely in partnership with suppliers is the only way to survive in today’s competitive business environment.