Mixed media, intention and contrariety in Blake's art

grantor: University of TorontoThis dissertation examines William Blake's use of artistic media and his metaphorical representations of those media in his poetry, prose, and visual art. Blake's images of media have generally been considered to have rather monological meanings, but I argue that he destabilizes their moral associations so that they fluctuate between positive and negative possibilities. I contend that the ambiguity of these images allegorizes Blake's ambivalence about artistic intention itself. While his work often manifests a vehement desire to communicate vital intentions, it also reveals uncertainty about the potential of such intentions to reach beyond the artist's imagination. This uncertainty is also operative in larger ontological and metaphysical dimensions of Blake's art, because his idea of intention is implicated in the oppositional phenomenon of "contrariety," which is related to his theories of the "contraries" in his poems. For Blake, intention itself is contrary, which means that every intention necessarily invokes its opposite. Blake cultivates these contrary associations not in order to stymy interpretation, but rather to avoid Urizenic monologism and to create a kind of representation which is open to the imperatives of oppositional thinking. Contrariety generates semantic excess, which requires Blake's readers to undertake extraordinarily active forms of interpretation. Each of the four chapters examines a specific medium in Blake's work and tries to demonstrate how this medium embodies contrary intentional trajectories. Chapter One studies Blake's language, giving particular attention to his use of emphasis and his invocations of the prophetic voice. Chapter Two looks at Blake's theory and practice of linearism, showing how his lines embody the contrary functions of limitation and transgression. Chapter Three examines Blake's mirror metaphors and the mirror-effects of his graphic media, arguing that he alternates between a distortive Platonic mirror and a divine reflective surface which contains perfect representations. Chapter Four focuses on Blake's images of mechanism and his use of mechanical processes in his graphic media, arguing that he portrays technology as both an aid to human agency and a hindrance to it. Each of these chapters shows how Blake's contrariety of intention creates excess, which moves beyond the limits of system.Ph.D