Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety - Rilegato

Rovira, James

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1441135596 ISBN 13: 9781441135599

Casa editrice: Continuum Intl Pub Group, 2010

Riassunto

`Blake and Kierkegaard speak from the same instinct of the human condition and of man's states of anxiety and self-awareness. James Rovira offers a highly nuanced comparative reading of both authors' concepts, of innocence and experience, creation and fall, that not only enhances our understanding of the works under consideration but affirms their abiding and life-affirming reievance to modern thought.'-Michael Phillips, Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York, UK

Apocalyptip nightmares that humanly created Intelligences will one day rise up against their creators haunt the western creative imagination. However, these narratives find their initial expression not in the widely disseminated Frankenstein story but in William Blake's early mythological works.

This book looks at why we persistently fear our own creations by examining Blake's illuminated books of the 1790s through the lens of Kierkegaard's theories of personality and of anxiety. It offers a close examination of Kierkegaard's and Blake's similar, and to an extent shared, historical milieux as residents of Denmark's and England's political and economic centres. Their residence in major urban centres motivated them to develop a concept of innocence closely identified with the pastoral, and to place their respective and similar concepts of innocence within a larger developmental scheme encompassing an ethical and then a religious consciousness.

Rovira identifies contemporary tensions between monarchy and democracy, science and religion, and nature and artifice as the source both of Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety and Blake's representation of creation anxiety in his early illuminated books.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

'Rovira's book is an involved but extremely rewarding book, one that delves fully into the complex and sophisticated dialectical processes involved in Kierkegaard's thought... Blake and Kierkegaard as a whole is a carefully thought-through and argued text.' --zoamorphosis.com, 17th Jan 2011

L'autore:

James Rovira is Assistant Professor of English at Tiffin University, Ohio, USA.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Continuum Intl Pub Group
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1441135596
• ISBN 13: 9781441135599
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 184