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Blake's Orient

Blake's Orient EDWARD LARRISSY I On the face of it there might not seem to be that much material relating to ‘the Orient’ in Blake, let alone to ‘Orientalism’. There are some things to go on, but his ‘Asia’, in The Song of Los, is notoriously thin on the Asiatic, and the remarks on Asia in the Descriptive Catalogue centre, in a somewhat schematic way, on a conception linking ancient art to the depiction of aspects of God (‘Cherubim’, according to Blake). One may feel impelled to fall back on such measures as including the Hebrew in the ‘oriental’ – which is not in itself a false or dishonourable inclusion, of course, and indeed is a necessary one. Furthermore, Saree Makdisi has claimed recently that, in the 1790s, Blake is the ‘only major poet who categorically refused to dabble in recognizably Orientalist themes or motifs’.1 This is an understandable claim, and it seeks corroboration in those aspects of Blake which are contemptuous of prejudice: in his readiness to see the human form divine in ‘heathen turk or jew’, as in ‘A Divine Image’ from Songs of Innocence, which Makdisi cites.2 Nevertheless, I think that, with so little evidence to go http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Romanticism Edinburgh University Press

Blake's Orient

Romanticism , Volume 11 (1): 1 – Apr 1, 2005

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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
1354-991X
eISSN
1750-0192
DOI
10.3366/rom.2005.11.1.1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

EDWARD LARRISSY I On the face of it there might not seem to be that much material relating to ‘the Orient’ in Blake, let alone to ‘Orientalism’. There are some things to go on, but his ‘Asia’, in The Song of Los, is notoriously thin on the Asiatic, and the remarks on Asia in the Descriptive Catalogue centre, in a somewhat schematic way, on a conception linking ancient art to the depiction of aspects of God (‘Cherubim’, according to Blake). One may feel impelled to fall back on such measures as including the Hebrew in the ‘oriental’ – which is not in itself a false or dishonourable inclusion, of course, and indeed is a necessary one. Furthermore, Saree Makdisi has claimed recently that, in the 1790s, Blake is the ‘only major poet who categorically refused to dabble in recognizably Orientalist themes or motifs’.1 This is an understandable claim, and it seeks corroboration in those aspects of Blake which are contemptuous of prejudice: in his readiness to see the human form divine in ‘heathen turk or jew’, as in ‘A Divine Image’ from Songs of Innocence, which Makdisi cites.2 Nevertheless, I think that, with so little evidence to go

Journal

RomanticismEdinburgh University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2005

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