Blake and Lucretius (eBook)

The Atomistic Materialism of the Selfhood

Joshua Schouten de Jel (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2021 | 1st ed. 2021
X, 266 Seiten
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-030-88888-6 (ISBN)

Infos

This book demonstrates the way in which William Blake aligned his idiosyncratic concept of the Selfhood - the lens through which the despiritualised subject beholds the material world - with the atomistic materialism of the Epicurean school as it was transmitted through the first-century BC Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. By addressing this philosophical debt, this study sets out a threefold re-evaluation of Blake's work: to clarify the classical stream of Blake's philosophical heritage through Lucretius; to return Blake to his historical moment, a thirty-year period from 1790 to 1820 which has been described as the second Lucretian moment in England; and to employ a new exegetical model for understanding the phenomenological parameters and epistemological frameworks of Blake's mythopoeia. Accordingly, it is revealed that Blake was not only aware of classical atomistic cosmogony and sense-based epistemology but that he systematically mapped postlapsarian existence onto an Epicurean framework.

Joshua Schouten de Jel is a recent doctoral graduate from the University of Plymouth, UK. He is the author of articles on William Blake, Mary Shelley, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.11.2021
• Reihe/Serie: The New Antiquity
• Reihe/Serie: The New Antiquity
• Zusatzinfo: X, 266 p.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Antiquity • Classical Studies • De rerum natura • Enlightenment • Epicureanism • Epistemology • Philosophy • Postlapsarian • roman poet • Romanticism
• ISBN-10: 3-030-88888-6 / 3030888886
• ISBN-13: 978-3-030-88888-6 / 9783030888886