------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 30 Today's Topics: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx What's math got to do with it? Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Announcement: Prometheus Unplugged? Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx blake and modern psychology Re: Blake's tombstone Charles Agar Charles Agar netiquette Re: netiquette Rude comments on the list Re: blake and modern psychology Re: introduction hello.. Remove from sender (Un-sbuscribe) Thanks Re: BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1): SENSE VS PSYCHE Re: BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1) Re: BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1) Re: R Dumain and Satan Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Re: hello.. Blake and Lewis Carroll Thompson's Muggletonian Blake Re: hello.. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 21:10:46 -0800 (PST) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Cc: marxism2@jefferson.village.virginia.edu Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Message-Id: <199604050510.VAA16855@igc4.igc.apc.org> I can't find the time to thank all those who have posted me privately and publicly and provided references for future reading as well as supportive remarks. This will have to serve as one collective thank you. I am just about out of time for lengthy posts for awhile, though I would like to write more about Blake and science, issues of systematic interpretation, as well as follow up on unfinished business from previous arguments. I split my sides over Hugh Walthall's phone calls from Blake, so I thought out a few and sat down and wrote out one of my own, which is hysterically funny but might be too sexually explicit for this list. Some follow-up to Vic Paananen. I need to correspond with you personally about Jack Lindsay, but I just wanted to point out a few things for a public audience. I did indeed read that article you cite. I was surprised to find an article on Lindsay in NATURE, SOCIETY, AND THOUGHT just after I complained on another list that Jack Lindsay seemed to be completely unknown in the USA. (I have only three of his hundreds of books and I can't find his stuff in used book stores.) However, I did some reading up on him at the Library of Congress a few months ago, particularly a festschrift I think was called CULTURE AND HISTORY. If memory serves, Lindsay got all of his dialectical thinking from Blake and possibly one or two other poets, and he worked out his methods long before he studied Hegel and Marx. He was already a public literary figure in the 1920s, and his first book on Blake is cited in Wicksteed's introduction. With the crisis of the 1930s he turned to Marxism. His own stubbornly idiosyncratic and independent brand of Marxism seems to be common (am I wrong?) among people in the Commonwealth anglophone countries raised on literature, such as the Australian Lindsay, the Englishmen E.P. Thompson and Christopher Caudwell, and the Trinidadian C.L.R. James. Frankly, I prefer this heritage, if it can be called that, to the loathsome stuff that has come out of France in the past half-century. This is not the appropriate occasion to discuss Marx's "post-theism" in detail. Though indeed Marx was an atheist, he declines to adhere to that label in the 1844 manuscripts, since he thinks he has gone beyond the concerns of "Atheism". To understand this, however, one has to know some of the history of the Young Hegelians, especially Bruno Bauer. There is something in Marx's method of this time period which is very fruitful for the kind of studies I have been outlining in my posts, though in fact the development of my approach antedated a serious study of the young Marx and was more motivated by my study of James. What an exhilarating and exhausting week this has been! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 01:49:27 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Agar To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Message-Id: <199604050649.BAA03532@uhura.cc.rochester.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ralph, First, your name is Ralph, as in Ralph Malph or a term meaning vomit. You are a pud. You must have no real reason to live cuz all you do is post to this group... you frighten me... please make friends with some flesh and blood people and then get back to all of us. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 01:55:20 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Agar To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Message-Id: <199604050655.BAA04674@uhura.cc.rochester.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ralph, I'm in a seminar about Blake, engrossed in the most grizzly details of the unforgiving _Milton_ and all of us in the class are still somehow really afraid of YOU. Please seek Prozac or something that will quell your neurosis. Talk to someone. Later tater. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 08:16:26 -0600 (CST) From: Greg Sturgeon To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 5 Apr 1996, Charles Agar wrote: > Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 01:49:27 -0500 (EST) > From: Charles Agar > To: blake@albion.com > Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx > > > Ralph, > > First, your name is Ralph, as in Ralph Malph or a term meaning vomit. You > are a pud. You must have no real reason to live cuz all you do is post to > this group... you frighten me... please make friends with some flesh and > blood people and then get back to all of us. > > If this is the kind of crap that passes for blake discussion, then unsubscribe me RIGHT NOW!!!! Greg Sturgeon c647679@showme.missouri.edu enggreg@showme.missouri.edu http://www.missouri.edu/~c647679/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 96 13:00 EST From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com Subject: What's math got to do with it? Message-Id: <9604051802.AA05856@uu6.psi.com> Matthew Dubuque, --Thanks for your very interesting reply to my questions that you sent a while ago. Sorry I haven't had time to respond sooner-- your post is fascinating, and I'm particularly intrigued by the biological discoveries you mention, such as: " The biologist Gregory Bateson, writing in A Sacred Unity, points out that over one-third of the neural pathways connecting the eye to the visual cortex go FROM the brain TO the eye. In other words, the brain manufactures a good portion of what we see. Vision is a creative process. This is consistent with Blake as well. In The Embodied Mind, Francisco Varela cites published experiments he has performed that demonstrate that the perception of color in humans is different depending on whether they are standing or lying down. So what does all this science and its associated math have to do with morality? Well, in physiology, The Weber-Fechner relation tells us that perception, experience, and sensation are literally derivative functions. In other words, the perceived intensity of a stiumulus is related to the logarithm of the intensity of that stimulus. For example, if the smallest difference in weight that your hand cand can perceive is between an object that weighs two ounces and one that weighs five ounces, the Weber-Fechner law states that you will be unable to differentiate between two objects, one of which weighs two pounds and the other four pounds. The smallest difference you will be able to perceive would be between an object weighing two pounds and one weighing five pounds. It is the mathematical ratio (two/fifths) that remains constant. We do not interact dirctly with the world, but only upon models, maps, and transforms of it. "If the doors of perception could be cleansed..." " **But I'm not sure I follow your reasoning here: " Because "reason" and "science" have at last caught up with Blake, our ethical visions must necesarily also change. With Descartes' invention of Cartesian grids (x-y axes) and Newton's invention of differential calculus, the Age of Reason accelerated previous Manichean tendencies to cleave everything (including morality) along the lines of "either/or", right/wrong, and black/white dichotomies. This was upsetting to Blake who knew these to be false dichotomies, as he shows in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Francisco Varela explains in The Embodied Mind that because we create much of the world we live in, rather than merely interpreting it objectively, we are, in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism responsible for our own creations. Our task becomes one of reducing the suffering of others trapped in their false dichotomies. " **I like this thought because it sound progressive -- but I'm not sure whether we can or should or must do something which we could be doing out of clouded, ego-blinded judgment ourselves. . . I guess I'm always wary of idealistic talk, but I must admit I'm an idealist myself (both/and), and I'm curious about _how_ you think we might go about reducing the suffering of those you percieve as trapped. . . Again, maybe I'm being a little dense, but I think it might help if you clarified what you mean by the kinds of people who are trapped in worlds of false dichotomies: If this is a call to moral arms, can we get a clearer sense of what we're dealing with, and what we should be doing? Shall we brandish Blake as the new bible to be carried to the four corners of the unenlightened earth? (Don't ethical imperatives always imply a right and wrong? not a both/and?) --Elisa ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 12:12:35 -0600 (CST) From: hmm To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII nOn Fri, 5 Apr 1996, Greg Sturgeon wrote: > On Fri, 5 Apr 1996, Charles Agar wrote: > > Ralph, > > > > First, your name is Ralph, as in Ralph Malph or a term meaning vomit. You > > are a pud. You must have no real reason to live cuz all you do is post to > > this group... you frighten me... please make friends with some flesh and > > blood people and then get back to all of us. > > > > > > If this is the kind of crap that passes for blake discussion, then > unsubscribe me RIGHT NOW!!!! actually, you've caught us on a good day -- we usually have to resort to fart jokes in our flames... m c647749@showme.missouri.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 96 13:32 EST From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Announcement: Prometheus Unplugged? Message-Id: <9604051835.AA09117@uu6.psi.com> There's an on-line Romanticism conference that's happening right now until, I think, April 27 that you should all check out, because it features a number of papers on Blake! This is the 3rd Annual Nat'l Graduate Student Conference on Romanticism that's taking place at Emory University, and on the World-wide Web. The papers have been posted, and you can view them by contacting either of the following websites: http://prometheus.cc.emory.edu, or http://www.emory.edu/Romanticism. The great thing about this conference is that you can read the papers AND respond to the writers to offer them feedback (Please check out my paper on William Blake and Thomas Paine in Panel 2B: Revolutionary Ferment and Jacobin Fear. I'll be interested to hear from you about what you think of it. . .:-) ) --Elisa ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 13:39:00 -0500 From: grayrobe@pilot.msu.edu (Robert M. Gray, Jr.) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Message-Id: <199604051839.NAA159657@pilot08.cl.msu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On Thursday, April 5, Charles Agar wrote: >First, your name is Ralph, as in Ralph Malph or a term meaning vomit. You >are a pud. You must have no real reason to live cuz all you do is post to >this group... you frighten me... please make friends with some flesh and >blood people and then get back to all of us. Dear Mr. Agar, It strikes me that this sort of post is inappropriate on this list. You certainly have a right to your opinions of Mr. Dumain, and you have a right to express them, but as a member of this list (as well as a few other lists that together generate some 60+ messages a day), I think I am well within my rights to ask that you express them either among the all-of-you-in-your-seminar-who-are-afraid-of-him, or to him personally (you can get his e-mail address off any of his posts). I see no reason why I should have to muddle through something like this, even if it was a more successful attempt at humor. I'll admit that Ralph might get a little out of hand on occasion, and that I don't always agree with his opinions, although I frequently do agree with his insights, but I applaud his energy and sincerity and, frankly, look forward to his posts. Thanks, Rob Gray ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 05 Apr 1996 21:00:41 +0200 From: thijssen@ecn.nl (Thijssen P.J.M.) To: blake@albion.com Subject: blake and modern psychology Message-Id: <9604051900.AA01330@lotus.ECN.NL> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Reading "Milton", especially the famous "Vortex" passage, I became interested in the connections between Blake's work and research done by present-day psychologists such as Stanislav Grof. Grof's area is "unusual states of consciousness". He has developed a taxonomy of different states of conciousness, based on his experience as a therapist. Some of his findings are strikingly similar to images we get from Blake, for example the above-mentioned Vortex-passage. Is anyone pursuing this? ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 13:52:58 -0600 From: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu (J. Michael) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake's tombstone Message-Id: <9604051957.AA17394@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm sending a copy of the photo (a closeup, without "Unisex Toilet") to LOS, who has a web page and has offered to put the photo on it. One of us will notify the list when it's available. In the meantime, here's the inscription: Near By Lie the Remains of The Poet-Painter William Blake 1757-1827 And of His Wife Catherine Sophia 1762-(latter date illegible) I haven't been able to find out when this marker was erected (does anyone know?), but one of my sources does mention a memorial in the crypt of St. Paul's, which I have not seen. Now for the homeless man: After my husband and I had venerated the tombstone, we sat down on a bench in the small park beside the cemetery. Shortly thereafter, we were approached by a denizen of said park (I don't actually know if he was homeless; we tend to use that word euphemistically instead of "wino" or "tramp"), who sat down next to us and began a conversation. He asked, "What country are you from?" We said America, to which he promptly replied, "I don't like that country." He then went on to rant about violence and the conditions in the housing projects near the cemetery, kids shooting each other, etc., and how all that had come from America. I suspect his politics were rather different from Blake's, but he shared Blake's sense of social and moral outrage. When we said we really must go, he insisted on shaking our hands and said something by way of benediction, which I must confess I can't remember. The whole experience was odd, to say the least. Jennifer Michael (Easter greetings to all: "It is Raised a Spiritual Body") ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 96 20:04:14 UT From: "John Hubanks" To: "Blake List" Subject: Charles Agar Message-Id: Charles, I would hope Ralph Dumain won't lower himself to respond to your childish attacks, however I now find myself in the rather awkward position of standing up in his defense. I do not agree with Ralph's views of Blake if I am to judge by what I have read here, but one thing this list does not need is someone wasting time and space to call another subscriber names. If you plan an continuing this behavior kindly unsubscribe. JH ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 96 16:46:23 -0800 From: Seth T. Ross To: blake@albion.com Cc: JSHubbub@msn.com Subject: Charles Agar Message-Id: <9604060046.AA00726@albion.com> Content-Type: text/plain John Hubanks writes in: > Charles ... I do not agree with Ralph's views of Blake if I > am to judge by what I have read here, but one thing this list > does not need is someone wasting time and space to call > another subscriber names. If you plan an continuing this > behavior kindly unsubscribe. Very nicely put, John. Nope, gratuitous personal attacks, name-calling, and other cheap flames are not welcome here on the Blake list, or anywhere else in cyberspace for that matter. Please, one and all, be sure to route your personal correspondence to the proper party, and not to the Blake list as whole. Flames should be directed to /dev/null. For a primer on network etiquette, see http://www.albion.com/nqhome.html Yours, Seth Ross Albion Sysadmin =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- BLAKE ONLINE ADMINISTRIVIA To leave Blake Online, send an email message to blake-request@albion.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the SUBJECT field (putting it in the body of the message may or may not work), like so: TO: blake-request@albion.com SUBJECT: unsubscribe Your address will be automatically unsubscribed. Occasionally, the automatic unsubscription mechanism fails. In that case, please DON'T send the request to the entire list distribution at the address blake@albion.com. Please use the address blake-request@albion.com for all administrative queries. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 05 Apr 96 17:55:46 CST From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: netiquette Message-Id: <9604060001.AA13813@uu6.psi.com> I appeal for calm in the populace. If you wish to respond to a recent excessively rude and unacceptable posting, please do so PRIVATELY. Do not rise to the bait. Please, do not rise to the bait by spoiling the list with useless responses. Write directly to the offending party and tell him what you think. I wrote to him immediately, harshly and briefly. I then advised Seth, privately, to remove him from the list if he errs again in such a rude way. Seth, of course, may exercise his power to remove the offender immediately, with no grace period. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 18:07:48 -0800 (PST) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: netiquette Message-Id: <199604060207.SAA03426@igc2.igc.apc.org> I don't mind being insulted, as long as it results in stimulating and productive intellectual debate. Charles is a mere amateur when it comes to creative invective, and worse, there is no intelelctual content. My last trip to a used book store today yielded a couple of interesting finds: CONVERSING IN PARADISE: POETIC GENIUS AND IDENTITY-AS-COMMUNITY IN BLAKE'S LOS by Leonard W. Deen. This looks potentially relevant to my interests and fascinating in any case. I also picked up a cheap copy of Abrams' THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP. And elsewhere I finally got to see a dissertation I've been waiting for: "the Relationship Bewtween Art and Philosophy: An Examination of Hegel, Blake, Nietzsche and Heidegger" (1984) by Rchard Taft. I'm so excited about all this stuff, but I can't touch it for a few weeks to come. And we thank you for your support. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Apr 96 05:53:12 UT From: "John Hubanks" To: "Blake List" Subject: Rude comments on the list Message-Id: Seth, Thanks for the cyber pat on the back. I would like to restrict any responses to similar postings to private, direct mailings as Mark Trevor Smith suggests, however I have one problem. I don't get the e-mail address with every posting. This may simply be a privacy issue or perhaps a lack of courage in certain cases, but I was wondering if the list has any resources which are open to the general subscriber (i.e. a list of addresses for other subscribers.) I don't want to make an issue of this; it just seems the safest way to avoid being baited. Thanks. JH ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 09:06:14 -0600 (CST) From: William Neal Franklin To: blake@albion.com Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: blake and modern psychology Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 5 Apr 1996, Thijssen P.J.M. wrote: > Reading "Milton", especially the famous "Vortex" passage, > I became interested in the connections between Blake's work > and research done by present-day psychologists such as > Stanislav Grof. Grof's area is "unusual states of > consciousness". He has developed a taxonomy of different > states of conciousness, based on his experience as a > therapist. Some of his findings are strikingly similar to > images we get from Blake, for example the above-mentioned > Vortex-passage. Is anyone pursuing this? > I am. Could you give us some references for Grof's work, and especially can you get us connected to the "taxonomy of different states of consciousness." ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 15:20:09 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew J Dubuque To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: introduction Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Greg- How about a study that shows that Blake was an inspiration for Lewis Carroll? Was he? Has this been done? Just a thought-- Matthew Dubuque virtual@leland.stanford.edu On Wed, 3 Apr 1996, Greg Sturgeon wrote: > I've been lurking for a while, almost fearful of saying anything, given > the--vigor--of some of the contributors. I am currently in the MA > program at the University of Missouri, where my interest has yet to be > fully worked out. Any suggestions? > > > Greg Sturgeon > c647679@showme.missouri.edu > enggreg@showme.missouri.edu > http://www.missouri.edu/~c647679/ > > ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 16:39:26 -0700 (MST) From: dlgossen To: blake@albion.com Subject: hello.. Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hello... im a student at the university of calgary... im taking this poetry class right, and we looked (really briefly) at a poem by blake... unfortunately, i didnt pay much attention to it... ive also been listening to van morrison (fanatically)... he makes reference to blake in a couple of his songs.... i went to talk to my poetry prof, but the guy is too much of a demigod to be any help.. so here's my question, and i hope someone can help me: what's the big deal about blake?... ive never read any of his stuff, so hopefully someone could point out his best work to me, i dunno... im looking for enlightenment here, please help educate the ignorant. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Apr 1996 20:25:04 -0500 (EST) From: "Ronald M Jou" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Remove from sender (Un-sbuscribe) Message-Id: <199604070125.UAA120110@pilot06.cl.msu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Length: 74 Please remove my address from the Blake group. It has been fun. Ron -- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 6 Apr 96 20:53:35 -0800 From: Kevin Lombardi To: "Blake List Serve" Subject: Thanks Message-Id: <9604070449.AA06994@uu6.psi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Dear Blake Enthusiasts-- I'd like to thank those of you who responded to my query re: Songs of Experience and "Poison Tree." You've helped this student-teacher appreciate The Bard much more. Cheers! Kevin Lombardi ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 18:34:32 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1): SENSE VS PSYCHE Message-Id: <960407183431_370931428@mail04> In a message dated 96-04-01 01:54:57 EST, you write: >Given time, I could prove his project >was very different than to create more ideology out of the >mystification of science. Please do. I'm interested Carole Moran ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 18:34:19 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1) Message-Id: <960407183418_370931312@emout06.mail.aol.com> In a message dated 96-03-31 04:08:14 EST, you write: > but then, that >shallowness too is typical of the American artsy-fartsy crowd. > Ralph Dumain: What does this mean? Carole ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 18:34:32 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: BLAKE & THE MODERNS (1) Message-Id: <960407183431_370931435@mail06> In a message dated 96-04-01 21:59:46 EST, you write: >Is this discourse or an Animal House foodfight? > >Matthew Dubuque > Matthew: Think about it: an Animal House food fight is more fun, more entertaining and can lead to more creativity than "mere" discourse. What happened to IMAGINATION? Carole Moran ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 18:34:35 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: R Dumain and Satan Message-Id: <960407183433_370931447@emout06.mail.aol.com> In a message dated 96-04-02 00:14:30 EST, you write: >I really appreciate Ralph Dumain's ideas and his reports on the Blake >literature, despite the vitriol of his posts. His passion in opposing any >attempt to separate art from life, or psychology from action, is a good >reminder and warning against some traps that are too easy to fall into. > >But still I hate your arrogance, Ralph. Flames hurt and destroy as well as >(sometimes) reveal. TD: If you think Dumain's messages are vitriol, may I suggest you check out a few news groups to get perspective? Try the alt. groups, such as alt.humor or any of the "hacker" groups. Those people have vitriol down to a fine art. This list, the Blake Online, is one of the most professional, most "gentlemanly" lists alive. Even other academic lists, particularly philosophers and psychologists, are somewhat nasty. I'm used to associating with people (in real life) who are very bright and who say what they think. Ralph Dumain fits right in to that group. To take umbrage (sp?) because someone's being honest with you is to invite lies. Personally, I'd rather have the honesty. Carole Moran ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 18:34:35 -0400 From: CaroleM250@aol.com To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Dumain, Blake, Marx Message-Id: <960407183435_370931462@emout08.mail.aol.com> Charles Agar, In a message dated 96-04-05 03:34:37 EST, you write: >Ralph, I'm in a seminar about Blake, engrossed in the most grizzly details >of the unforgiving _Milton_ and all of us in the class are still somehow >really afraid of YOU. Please seek Prozac or something that will quell your >neurosis. Talk to someone. Later tater. And elsewhere: > First, your name is Ralph, as in Ralph Malph or a term meaning vomit. You > are a pud. You must have no real reason to live cuz all you do is post to > this group... you frighten me... please make friends with some flesh and > blood people and then get back to all of us. > > FEAR is the neurosis. How easy it is to frighten the timid. Just declare oneself to be a born-again Baptist or a political pundit or an anti-social antheist or some other equally stereotypical being, and stand back to see who comes screaming out of the woodwork. Carole Moran ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Apr 96 7:48:18 MDT From: "Roderick Mcgillis" To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: hello.. Message-Id: <9604081348.AA27394@acs1.acs.ucalgary.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 2 n ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 09:09:27 -0500 From: tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake and Lewis Carroll Message-Id: <96040809092753@womenscol.stephens.edu> Chapter Four (105-121) of Morton Cohen's recent _Lewis Carroll: A Biography_, examines Blake's influence on Lewis Carroll in considerable detail. Cohen focuses specifically on the concept of the child in that period as constructed from influences of Rousseau, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. (Some of this argument harks back to Peter Coveney's study of the image of the child in Victorian England.) As other Blakeans will notice, Cohen has placed Blake in somewhat uncomfortable company and the chapter suffers a bit from assumptions about Blake's thinking that many would not accept--but it is seen filtered through Victorian assumptions, which explains the divergence from *echt*-Blake, perhaps. Tom Dillingham (tomdill@womenscol.stephens.edu) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 11:35:53 -0400 (EDT) From: TAYLOR@bcvms.bc.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Thompson's Muggletonian Blake Message-Id: <01I3APV0FOPQ8Y50CP@bcvms.bc.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Has there been any discussion, or does anyone have an opinion, about E.P. Thompson's book tracing Blake to Muggletonian roots? I rather liked the evocation of the radical religious dissent tradition at the expense of more neoplatonic and mystical sources. And some of the Muggletonian verses had a Blakean pungency to them? But what do the experts think? Dennis Taylor taylor@bcvms.bc.edu ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 12:00:13 -0500 (CDT) From: HXNEWSAM@ualr.edu To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: hello.. Message-Id: <960408120013.40207b05@ualr.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Hi, I'm an undergrad at a University in Arkansas and I'm currently working through most of Blake's work in an Independent Study Class on him. If you've never read any Blake you might want to start with the Songs of Innocence and Experience. These do not get so deeply into his mythology. In the way of his Illuminated mythologies, I'm tempted to say start with Jerusalem, because after a semester of struggling with Blakes constant changes and complications, I find Jerusalem the most accessible and explicit (ie. things in my opinion are more defined). This is just my take on him. Heather -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #30 *************************************