System in William Blake's 'prophetic books'

在《耶路撒冷》中，威廉·布莱克饰演的创意人物洛什宣称，我必须创造一个体系，否则就会被另一个人奴役。我的论文将试图质疑被称为“预言书”的长篇启蒙诗篇中“制度”的含义和本质。最近的社会理论研究对系统作为网络表现出了极大的兴趣。Clifford Siskin‘s System(2016)将“系统”的概念直接放在布莱克所居住的漫长的18世纪的一种知识形成中。我以最广泛的形式提出的研究问题将在具体的问题之间切换：布莱克的系统是什么？更广泛的问题是，什么是制度？从更广泛的历史角度来看，布莱克对制度的意志反映了一种更广泛的冲动，即对与启蒙运动有关的知识进行分类和系统化。批评家们经常过分强调布莱克对启蒙思想家的反对，认为这是他反系统论的证据；然而，我的论文将提出，布莱克作品中的体系性质表明，这位诗人和艺术家与康德、戈德温和边沁等当代体系建设者的联系比以前认为的更紧密。我的方法论将理论和物质方法结合到文本中。我将通过建筑学的框架对系统进行美学和形式化的思考，同时对布莱克的媒介进行物质研究，通过这种媒介，他的系统形成并可以被拆解或重新组装。康德的建筑学将为解释布莱克的体系提供一种有用的方法。他们不仅是近乎同时代的人，而且他们对世界的本质和形成的概念之间有重要的相似之处。两者都将世界体验为尚未概念化的东西，但提供了自己要形成的东西；换句话说，是一种潜力，在这种潜力中，有序主体成为综合和系统化的力量。康德将建筑学定义为“构建系统的艺术”。布莱克同样清楚地将制度建设理解为一种艺术；但他也将艺术理解为制度建设的一种形式。我的论文将分为三个部分，关于“建筑”、“身体”和“书籍”。为了将布莱克对他的预言书中的诗歌以及他的创作方法进行系统化，我将精选他的诗歌：从早期的手稿《月亮上的一个岛》到后来的预言《四个佐亚》、米尔顿和耶路撒冷。为了增强对布莱克这本书的物质形式的充分参与，我将特别详细地研究他最后一首预言诗耶路撒冷，因为它代表了他最新和最持久的尝试，以建立他自己的系统。除了西斯金的现代系统理论，他声称系统最好被理解为一种流派，以及德兰达的集合论，我还将讨论浪漫主义时期关于系统的最新解构角度。例如，拉詹和科尔布鲁克通过德勒兹的《没有器官的身体》研究了预言类书籍，康诺利研究了布莱克和身体，通过探索布莱克对人类身体的同时崇拜和厌恶，体现了布莱克与制度的纠葛关系。我还将考察虚拟的理论，包括奥托和马克迪西关于不可完成性和开放式文本的工作，遵循麦克甘普及的“不确定文本”的思想。我的研究将调查这本预言性书籍的媒介如何通过颠覆法典作为其传播场所的想法来重新创造传统的知识体系。相比之下，布莱克的浮雕版画书籍既不稳定，也不相同，这破坏了这本书是可靠的真理来源的想法。康德的建筑学将为这些文本带来新的视角，并将通过参与浪漫主义研究和人文科学中关于系统和知识构成的更广泛的辩论，突出布莱克艺术今天所拥有的文化购买。

In Jerusalem William Blake's creative figure Los declares 'I must Create a System or be enslav'd by another Man's.' My thesis will seek to question the meaning and nature of 'system' in the long illuminated poems known as the 'prophetic books.' Recent studies in social theory have shown a great interest in systems as networks. Clifford Siskin's System (2016) places the idea of 'system' as a species of knowledge formation squarely in the long eighteenth century Blake inhabited. My research questions in their broadest form will move between the specific enquiry 'what is Blake's system?' to the wider question of 'what is a system?'. From a broader historical perspective, Blake's will to system reflects a wider impulse to classify and systematise knowledge associated with the Enlightenment. Critics have often overemphasised Blake's opposition to Enlightenment thinkers as evidence of his anti-systematicity; however, my thesis will propose that the nature of system within Blake's work shows that the poet and artist was aligned with contemporary system-builders, such as Kant, Godwin and Bentham, more closely than previously thought.My methodology combines theoretical and material approaches to the texts. I will consider systems aesthetically and formally through the framework of architectonics, alongside the material study of Blake's medium, through which his system comes into being and can be dis- or re-assembled. Kant's architectonics will provide a useful way into interpreting system in Blake's. Not only were they near-contemporaries, but there are important parallels between their conceptions of the nature and formation of the world. Both experience the world as something not yet conceptualised but offering itself to be formed; in other words, a potentiality, in which the ordering subject becomes the synthesising and systematising power. Kant defines architectonics as 'the art of constructing systems.' Blake similarly clearly understood system-building as an art; but he also understood art as a form of system building. My thesis will be separated into three sections, on 'Building', 'Bodies', and 'Books'. In order to chart Blake's systematisation of not only the poetry of his prophetic books but his method of producing them, I will work on a selection of his poems: from the early manuscript An Island in the Moon, to the later prophecies, The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem. To enhance a full engagement with the physical form of Blake's book, I will study his final prophetic poem Jerusalem in particular detail because it represents his latest and most sustained attempt to produce his own system. In addition to present-day systems theory from Siskin, who claims system is best understood as a genre, and De Landa's assemblage theory, I will address recent deconstructive angles on systems in the Romantic period. For example, work from Rajan and Colebrook, who study the prophetic books through Deleuze's 'body without organs,' and work from Connolly on Blake and the body, which exemplifies Blake's vexed relationship with systems by exploring his 'simultaneous adoration and abomination of the human body.' I will also examine theories of the virtual, including Otto and Makdisi's work on unfinishability and open-ended texts, following the idea of the 'indeterminate text' popularised by McGann. My research will investigate how the medium of the prophetic book reinvents traditional systems of knowledge by subverting the idea of the codex as a site for its dissemination. By contrast, Blake's illuminated books of relief-etched plates are neither stable nor identical between copies, undermining the idea of the book as a reliable source of truth. Kant's architectonics will bring a new lens to these texts, and will highlight the cultural purchase that Blake's art has today by engaging with wider debates within Romantic studies and the humanities regarding systems and the formations of knowledge.