This chapter continues the task of tracing Blake’s cartographic networks, specifically introducing parallels, interlocutors, and antecedents for the kind of speculative mapping identifiable in Blake’s visions of the New Jerusalem (in the form of “Golgonooza”), his cosmic maps of the universe, and his depictions of spiritual journeys. These aspects of Blake’s cartographic imagination are introduced through the prism of his “spiritual networks” of contemporaries and near-contemporaries, as well as his literary forebears Dante, Milton, and Bunyan. The chapter begins with a consideration of intersections and divergences between Blake’s notion of the New Jerusalem and the theories of his near-contemporary, the Swedish mystic and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, whose following in London had coalesced in the 1780s into the New Jerusalem Church. Blake’s vexed engagement with Swedenborg’s mappings of the terrestrial New Jerusalem and the cosmic realms of Heaven and Hell typifies the shifting pattern of allegiance and disavowal that characterises Blake’s dialogue with contemporaneous cartographic culture across a wide array of forms, media, and intellectual domains. This patterning recurs in the nature of Blake’s visual responses to the works of Dante, Milton, and Bunyan, each of whom represents important precursors and spurs to Blake’s visions of cosmic spaces and spiritual journeys.

错误:搜索内容不能为空,请输入英文关键词
错误:关键词超出字数限制,请精简
高级检索

Spiritual Networks

  • Caroline Anjali Ritchie

摘要

This chapter continues the task of tracing Blake’s cartographic networks, specifically introducing parallels, interlocutors, and antecedents for the kind of speculative mapping identifiable in Blake’s visions of the New Jerusalem (in the form of “Golgonooza”), his cosmic maps of the universe, and his depictions of spiritual journeys. These aspects of Blake’s cartographic imagination are introduced through the prism of his “spiritual networks” of contemporaries and near-contemporaries, as well as his literary forebears Dante, Milton, and Bunyan. The chapter begins with a consideration of intersections and divergences between Blake’s notion of the New Jerusalem and the theories of his near-contemporary, the Swedish mystic and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, whose following in London had coalesced in the 1780s into the New Jerusalem Church. Blake’s vexed engagement with Swedenborg’s mappings of the terrestrial New Jerusalem and the cosmic realms of Heaven and Hell typifies the shifting pattern of allegiance and disavowal that characterises Blake’s dialogue with contemporaneous cartographic culture across a wide array of forms, media, and intellectual domains. This patterning recurs in the nature of Blake’s visual responses to the works of Dante, Milton, and Bunyan, each of whom represents important precursors and spurs to Blake’s visions of cosmic spaces and spiritual journeys.