------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 102 Today's Topics: Evil Be Thou My Good -Reply Re: Evil Be Thou My Good Special book List WEIRD BLAKE SIGHTINGS: M. CORNFORTH VS. LINGUISTIC FETISHISM NEMLA Call for Papers Re: Thel: a postscriptum ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 12:10:08 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, WaHu@aol.com Subject: Evil Be Thou My Good -Reply Message-Id: I said I would not communicate with Hugh again because he is rude and offensive - not because he thinks my reading dull. I also said I'd seen the Mormon cinematic version of heaven while passing through Utah years ago, and it doesn't resemble Blake's vision of heaven at all. I'd be interested to know why Kathleen Raine is dismissed as an idiot. Her prose is the most elegant and readable among critics, in my opinion, and I think her clear distinctions between Eternity and this world helped to free up the whole field of debate. In putting a Urizenic interpretation on what I said re Eternity, I see Hugh as `demonising' what i say - just a small metaphoric slip of the tongue. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 09:57:24 -0500 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Evil Be Thou My Good Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hugh wrote: >I have always suspected from the virulence (sic?) of his attack on Dr. >Johnson a closet affinity for the old geeser by Blake. As though the Doctor >were something Blake ate in his youth that he never digested. You're probably right about this. I've always seen in Thel a ghost of Johnson's Rasselas (young person discontented in the "happy valley"), and I'm going to try out that possibility on my students this semester. Jennifer Michael ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 10:20:25 -0500 (CDT) From: Darlene Sybert To: blake@albion.com Subject: Special book List Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This showed up on the book arts list... > Serendipity Books, of Berkeley, CA announces a special list, THE > TRIANON PRESS: Abbe Breuil / William Blake / Samuel Palmer / Ben > Shahn's HAGGADAH - ECCLESIASTES, superb examples of quality > design and printing. > I love that name--serendipity--anyway! Darlene Sybert http://www.missouri.edu/~c557506/index.htl University of Missouri at Columbia (English) ****************************************************************************** ...I felt like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise__ Silent, upon a peak in Darien. -Jn Keats ****************************************************************************** ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Aug 1996 13:01:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com, marxism2@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Subject: WEIRD BLAKE SIGHTINGS: M. CORNFORTH VS. LINGUISTIC FETISHISM Message-Id: <199608182001.NAA04060@igc6.igc.apc.org> MAURICE CORNFORTH AGAINST THE FETISHISM OF LANGUAGE: "But this role of abstract words, this 'tyranny of words,' is no new discovery of semantics. It has been recognised for a long time, and eloquently expressed by many progressive writers -- by William Blake, for example, when he wrote: In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear. "But whence these "mind-forged manacles," and to what do they owe their power? Is it because of the improper use of language and men's ignorance of semantics? Blake was a poet who never gave a thought to semantics, but he already knew better than that. These 'mind-forged manacles' are the reflection in men's consciousness of the material conditions of their social existence. And the 'manacles' which Blake was writing about, and which still attract the attention of Stuart Chase and others in the United States of America, were produced by and owe their influence to -- as Blake knew, and expressed in some of his poems -- the exploitation of man by man." In: Cornforth, Maurice, SCIENCE VERSUS IDEALISM: IN DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHY AGAINST POSITIVISM AND PRAGMATISM (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975), p. 309. (Reprint of 1962 ed., originally published 1955.) Interesting that Cornforth, as a Marxist defending materialism against all forms of idealism, including the scientific versions, should cite Blake as an ally. --RD ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 10:13:11 -0500 (CDT) From: RPYODER@ualr.edu To: BLAKE@albion.com Subject: NEMLA Call for Papers Message-Id: <960819101311.20230fa0@ualr.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT There will once again be a Blake session at the NEMLA Conference, this time in Philadelphia, PA, April 4-5, 1997. The session is open, and the organizers welcome papers and proposals on any aspect of Blake's life, work, times, or on Blake scholarship. Last year's session, organized by Josie McQuail, included papers by Rachel Billigheimer, Lida Zibian, John Grant, and Paul Yoder. The papers were all interesting,and there was some good discussion afterward. Participants must be members of NEMLA by November 1, 1996. Please send proposals or papers by September 15, 1996 to Paul Yoder English Department University of Arkansas at Little Rock 2801 S.University Little Rock, AR 72204-1099 or email at rpyoder@ualr.edu All inquiries concerning the session are welcome. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 20:09:59 MET From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER" To: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu, blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Thel: a postscriptum Message-Id: <36C60474DD3@netwareserver.uni-trier.de> On Monday, August 5th, Mary Lynn Johnson reminded us of her fine and insightful reading of *Thel* in the *Journal of English and Germanic Philology*. She ended by saying > Didn't mean to go on so long. -- And yet, I'm awfully glad she did so. -- DW Doerrbecker -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #102 **************************************