Blake and Lucretius

The Atomistic Materialism of the Selfhood
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-030-88887-9
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 473 g

Reihe: The New Antiquity

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.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Schouten de Jel, Joshua

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Lateinische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Einzelne Autoren: Monographien & Biographien
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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.

Über Autor(innen)

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.