The Representation of the Female in William Blake Essay examples -- Bi

The Representation of the Female in William BlakeIf William Blake was, as Northrop Frye described him in his prominent book Fearful Symmetry, a unavowed enraptured with incommunicable visions, standing apart, a lonely and isolated figure, out of touch perception with his own age and without influence on the following one (3), beat has proved to be the visionarys close to celebrated ally, making him one of the most frequently written about poets of the English language. William Blake has become, in a sense, an institution.Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, be necessary to Human Existence, wrote Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Perhaps his most famous line, these rowing are the connecting thread through all of Blakes work, from The Songs of Innocence and Experience to Jerusalem. But what those words mean has been a point of contention throughout the years. What does that mean for the phallic and the Female w ho are at the center of his work? If they are Contraries, past what does the Female in Blakes work represent? Just what did Blake mean? And from where did his ideas and perceptions take a hop?In 1977 Susan Fox addressed these questions in her well-renowned essay The Female as Metaphor in William Blakes Poetry. As the first literary critic to chin wag on Blakes inconsistencies in his treatment of the Female, Fox explores the progression of the extended simile throughout the course of his career. She explains that Blakes vision of the Contraries became more clear to him as age went on therefore, the contradiction lies in his earlier views of the Female, identified with weakness and failure, and his later attempt to rescu... ...cism 34 (1995) 255-270.Ostriker, Alicia. Desire Gratified and Ungratified William Blake and Sexuality. Blake An Illustrated Quarterly 16 (1983) 156-165.Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven Yale Un iversity Press, 1990 270-299.Pavy, Jeanne Adele. A Blakean toughie of Reading Gender and Genre in William Blakes Poetry. DAI 53 (1993)Emory University.Storch, Margeret. Sons and Adversaries Women in William Blake and D. H. Lawrence. Knoxville University of Tennessee Press, 1990.Webster, Brenda. Blake, Women, and Sexuality. searing Paths Blake and the Argument of Method. Eds. Donald Ault, Mark Bracher, and Dan Miller. Durham and London Duke University Press, 1987 204-224.Wilkie, Brian. Blakes Thel and Oothoon. B. C. Canada University of Victoria Press, 1990.