L Helen’s Office Hours: Padelford B 522, 3-5 PM Wednesday Updated Schedule Dinner this Saturday at our house: th Ave NE Bus routes: 48, 72, 73, Best: 71, get off at 19 th Nothing to bring: this is a full and varied meal. Bring partners or friends if you like.

Revisions to the schedule Assignments: Note that the poetry reading assignment (paper or video) is not due until the last week. I realize I may have made it sound as if it were the next assignment, but no. That one is commentary on British Romanticism. Instructions on that will be distributed. From here to the end: focus on major poems in class, but broader reading in the Appelbaum anthology. We will talk about that today. THE INTENT: discussion of examples to bring to the fore attention to detail, and structural inference. I am NOT going to ask you to write conventional papers that give ‘readings’ of poems. That is an activitity that is anterior to writing. The topics for the final papers will be specified, and distributed three weeks before the end of the quarter. After today, I will complete a revision of the schedule, with more detail, but note that reading more poems on your own, with focus on major poems for in class discussion will be the general pattern.

Blake’s Mythopoetic strategies Innocence and Experience: INDIVIDUALS and STATES. This is a mode of understanding in which you do NOT isolate yourself as possessing a unique identity. A ‘self’ by that route can become a SELFHOOD, which for Blake is about the worst thing that can happen to you. The strategy: the poet as prophet; the prophecy as experiment. IF you go on so, THEN this will be the consequence. The tactics: You are not just a separate person: you are a COMPOSITE, consisting of discernible aspects, states, each of which can be imagined as a FIGURE, a PERSONA, a CREATURE with very specific qualities

From Thel to the Four Zoas If you take the state of INNOCENCE, as one can conceptualize it (tautegorically: i.e., seeing the same quality in multiple things without collapsing their respective differences) and present it as a PERSONA. THEL, in this respect, personifies INNOCENCE, including its least attractive qualities: fantasy, the desire for everything to be in service of one’s own desires, wanting paradoxically never to grow up.

The Four Zoas A long story here, through many works that experiment with Blake’s mode of conceptualization. Simply, YOU are NOT yourself. You are composed of 4 beings, Zoas (Greek for living creature), that resemble but are not identifiable with faculty psychology. Simply: URIZEN: Your mental power of calculation and control URTHONA (LOS): The making power, a blacksmith. Your imagination LUVAH (ORC): Your passions, sexuality, aggression, self assertion THARMAS: Your stupid body, your nervous system, the sensorium that does not think but reacts

These DIVIDE One by one, the ZOAS, as Blake depicts them, falls away from the others (a universal androgyous man, ALBION) whereupon the ZOA, Male, thinks he is in control of everything and acts like God. But seriatim, each one, after falling into isolation, divides into a male and female component: URIZEN  AHANIA son: FUZON URTHONA (LOS)  ENITHARMON son: ORC LUVAH (ORC)  VALA offspring: The SPECTRE THARMAS  ENION offspring: MYSTERY

The texts Early: THEL, then VISIONS OF THE DAUGHTERS OF ALBION Political Prophecies: AMERICA EUROPE SONG OF LOS (asia) The ‘Bible of Hell’Book of Urizen Book of Ahania Book of Los VALA... which transforms to THE FOUR ZOAS: The torments of love and jealousy of Albion, the Ancient man, or... How each ZOA becomes a self who thinks he is God, becomes a murderous tyrant or Spectre of himself (a SELFHOOD), and torments first his female EMANATION, and then his children. INCLUDING what Northrop Frye calls The ORC CYCLE. See The Grey Monk This produces an unfinishable narrative, leading to: MILTONAn extraordinary engagement with the idea and the mission of Poety Which gives way to: JERUSALEM a unique EPIC concerning how it is possible, in the fallen state of this work, to BECOME HUMAN. We are going to look at two pieces: Marriage of Heaven & Hell, and time permitting, The Book of Urizen. The rest is for your subsequent education (leave plenty of time)

The Grey Monk I die I die the Mother said My Children die for lack of Bread What more has the merciless Tyrant said The Monk sat down on the Stony Bed The blood red ran from the Grey Monks side His hands & feet were wounded wide His Body bent his arms & knees Like to the roots of ancient trees His eye was dry no tear could flow A hollow groan first spoke his woe He trembled & shudderd upon the Bed At length with a feeble cry he said When God commanded this hand to write In the studious hours of deep midnight He told me the writing I wrote should prove The Bane of all that on Earth I lovd My Brother starvd between two Walls His Childrens Cry my Soul appalls I mockd at the wrack & griding chain My bent body mocks their torturing pain Thy Father drew his sword in the North With his thousands strong he marched forth Thy Brother has armd himself in Steel To avenge the wrongs thy Children feel But vain the Sword & vain the Bow They never can work Wars overthrow The Hermits Prayer & the Widows tear Alone can free the World from fear For a Tear is an Intellectual Thing And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King And the bitter groan of the Martyrs woe Is an Arrow from the Almighties Bow The hand of Vengeance found the Bed To which the Purple Tyrant fled The iron hand crushd the Tyrants head And became a Tyrant in his stead

THEL (course reader)