Representations of the Female Breasts and Milk in Blake's Composite Art

我花了两年的时间研究威廉·布莱克在他的诗歌和视觉艺术中表现女性乳房和乳汁的方式。布莱克的视觉艺术通常是独立于他的语言文本进行研究的，尽管这两种艺术媒介在他的艺术执行中是不可分割地结合在一起的。他的诗实际上是穿插插图的，我把这两种艺术媒介看作是一种复合艺术。在我对布莱克的合成艺术的分析中，我把重点放在了关键的主题上，“女性的乳房”和“牛奶”。在澄清了这些主题与18世纪对它们的理解相抵触的意思之后，我研究了布莱克的作品中女性的乳房和乳汁是如何被视觉化的，尤其是在他后来的照明作品中。在男女两性的性冲突中，从女性乳房流出的乳汁与男性的精液有着明显的对立关系。在我对布莱克后期作品的研究中，性别问题受到了密切关注。我使用了布莱克的彩绘作品的复制品。分析布雷克档案馆网站上的数字化图片也很有用。

Two years have been spent in examining the ways in which William Blake represented the female breasts and milk in his poetry as well as in his visual art. Blake's visual art is conventionally examined independently of his verbal text, despite that the two mediums of art are inseparably combined in his execution of art. His poems are actually interlined with illustrations, and I regard the two mediums of art as a form of composite art.In my analysis of Blake's composite art, I focus upon the key motifs, "the female breasts" and "milk." Having clarified what he meant by these motifs against the eighteenth-century understanding of them, I examined how the female breast and milk are visualized in Blake's works, especially in his later illuminated works. Issuing from the female breasts, milk is significantly opposed to the male semen in the sexual conflict between women and men. Gender issues are closely examined in my examination of Blake's later works.I made use of the facsimiles of Blake's illuminated works. It was also useful to analyze the digitized pictures which were available in the Blake Archive web site.