Blake and the Comic Tradition

我的研究试图将布莱克从传统叙事中解脱出来，传统叙事将他视为一个永远真诚的梦想家，而不是揭示他与喜剧模式的接触。我提出的博士研究将阐明，这两个布莱克并非互不相容。正如布莱克所写的，不笑是“许多精力充沛的人所不知道的一种力量”（《给拉瓦特的注解》）——喜剧不仅有趣，而且对他的精神活力概念来说是必不可少的。我将通过对他的文本和图像的近距离跨学科阅读来分析布莱克的喜剧。首先，我将考虑布莱克继承了令人惊讶的奥古斯都式幽默。我的研究将阅读布莱克与波普和斯威夫特的诗歌之间的激进结合，即高/低，史诗/琐碎（比如弥尔顿从戈尔戈努扎的后裔“东到布莱克希思，西到豪恩斯洛/北到芬奇利，南到诺伍德”）。模拟英雄的堕落和扭曲的规模感体现了布莱克的愿景，在革命的内在中爆发了等级制度。我的研究试图恢复布莱克在文学史上的地位，不仅将他描述为一位浪漫主义诗人，而且同样重要的是，他是一位不折不扣的18世纪诗人。然后，我将考虑布莱克与克里斯托弗·斯玛特的预言式幽默的相似之处，以及乔叟式的淫秽和莎士比亚式的傻瓜对布莱克喜剧的未被充分发掘的影响。我渴望扩大我的研究范围，在当代视觉讽刺和哥特式艺术的怪诞背景下探索布莱克。

My research seeks to untangle Blake from conventional narratives, which read him solely as an always-earnest visionary, and instead reveal his engagements with the comic mode. My proposed PhD study will illuminate that these two Blakes are not incompatible. As Blake writes, abstention from laughter is 'a power unknown to many a vigorous mind' ('Annotations to Lavater') - comedy is not only funny but is imperative to his notion of mental dynamism. I will analyse Blakean comedy through a close, interdisciplinary reading of his text and images. First, I will consider Blake's surprising inheritance of an Augustan humour. My study will read Blake's radical union of high/low, epic/trivial (like Milton's descent from Golgonooza 'to Blackheath east to Hounslow west/ To Finchley north to Norwood south') in relation to Pope and Swift's bathos. Mock-heroic falls and a warped sense of scale enact Blakean vision which explodes hierarchy in revolutionary immanence. My research seeks to resituate Blake in literary history, characterising him not only as a Romantic poet but also, and no less significantly, as a squarely eighteenth-century one. I will then consider Blake's similarities to Christopher Smart's prophetically charged humour as well as the underexplored influence of Chaucerian bawdiness and the Shakespearean Fool on Blake's comedy. I am keen to widen my research to explore Blake in the context of contemporary visual satire and the grotesque register of Gothic art.