"The Book of Thel" by William Blake: A Critical Reading
1980; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 47; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2872747
ISSN1080-6547
Autores Tópico(s)Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies
ResumoThat name is derived from a Greek root meaning 'desire' is no news to any serious reader of Blake. above quotation appears in David Perkins' textbook anthology, where it is given as a footnote to the title, The Book of Thel. Yet the suggestive identity between and Desire is largely ignored. When W. J. T. Mitchell describes the poem's action as story of a young woman who questions own usefulness and purpose in a world where everything dies or fades away,2 he expresses a critical consensus. In the main, The Book of Thel is read as a Little Girl Lost/Found poem writ large. personification (Thel) is naturalized into character and the character's psyche is analyzed, its parts and processes used to support statements about Blake's view of human development. is treated as a psychological construct having ontological density; she is seen to figure either as the true subject of the poem or as a surrogate for the reader,3 that is, a character who feels, thinks, and behaves as we might. We read of her desire for Wisdom and Love as if Desire-the thing personified-were not synonymous with but a motivation impelling a rounded character. When Desire is thus regarded as the young woman's defining characteristic, or as the object of investigations, the poem presents itself as an allegory of psychosexual development. Although the Little Girl and Little Boy Lost and Found poems of the Songs of Innocence and Experience tend toward assuming this form, they are saved in the end from achieving allegorical fixity. Songs exist within a symbolic frame of reference; they appear under the aegis of a major symbol (Innocence or Experience) and a minor one (Piper or Bard).4 We cannot abstract event or character from idea because the symbol intervenes, preventing the two levels from disengaging. The Book of Thel, lacking this context, offers no obvious resistance to allegorization. Blake's notorious disdain for allegory5-specifically, for the dualistic ways of thinking it encourages-did not, evidently, prevent him from writing one. His remarks, however, should temper
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