William Blake and London: The Artist Visualising Jerusalem

布莱克是一个不折不扣的城市人，也是一个不折不扣的伦敦人，诗人和艺术家。然而，他对大都市的描绘在他的作品中不断变化：在某些地方，城市是永恒的“上帝之城”，而在其他地方，则是一系列混乱的、不连贯的过程。这种多样性反映在当代伦敦因其商业扩张而产生的剧烈物质变化，以及当代城市视觉表现的扩散。在伦敦视觉印刷文化的背景下考察布莱克，这项研究将对他的预言性作品产生独特的新见解，特别关注那些研究不足的领域：伦敦前景；网关和边界；城市是一个过程。借助档案收藏（即大英博物馆、大都会档案馆、古物协会），本博士将追溯布莱克的全部作品，他与他的城市的互动，体现在他的文本中，是如何被当代宗教、经济，尤其是视觉文化所调解的。虽然布莱克的作品中有许多批判性的作品（如迈克尔）接近了这座城市，但他对伦敦视觉印刷文化表现的参与仍未得到充分探索。这篇论文将展示布莱克在他对城市空间的表述和概念化中所遇到的伦敦的各种迭代。布莱克瞥见的乌托邦将与基督教的“上帝之城”概念联系在一起，他将城市空间异化为城市作为一系列物质和经济过程的观念。这种研究布莱克的新方法与最近的学术（如米隆）联系在一起，后者将这位现代艺术家的诞生定位在18世纪早期的伦敦，并首次将布莱克的作品与马克思主义评论家列斐伏尔和德·塞托进行了对话。它对版画文化的关注也将布莱克与他的环境的关系带到一个新的方向，探索他的作品如何融入当代处理和可视化城市的尝试。

Blake was an unmistakably urban, and emphatically a London, poet and artist. His representations of themetropolis, however, constantly shift in his work: at points the city is the eternal 'City of God', and at others achaotic series of disconnected processes. This variety is reflected by contemporary London's drastic materialchanges ensuing from its commercial expansion, and by the proliferation of contemporary visualrepresentations of the city. Examining Blake in the context of London's visual print culture, this research willproduce distinctive new insights into his prophetic works, focusing in particular on areas that have been underresearched:London prospects; gateways and boundaries; and the city as process.Drawing on archival collections (i.e. British Museum, Metropolitan Archives, Society of Antiquaries) this PhDwill trace across Blake's oeuvre how his interactions with his city, as embodied in his texts, were mediated bycontemporary religious, economic, and especially visual cultures. While much critical work (e.g. Michael) hasapproached the city in Blake's works, his engagement with visual print culture representations of Londonremains under-explored. This thesis will show how the various iterations of London encountered by Blakemanifest themselves in his representations and conceptualisations of urban spaces. Blake's glimpsed utopiancities will be related to the Christian concept of the 'City of God', and his alienated urban spaces to the idea ofthe city as a series of material and economic processes. This new approach to Blake ties into recentscholarship (e.g. Myrone) which locates the birth of the modern artist in early eighteenth-century London, andputs Blake's work into dialogue with Marxist critics Lefebvre and de Certeau for the first time. Its focus on printculture also takes Blake's relationship with his environment in fresh directions, exploring how his works fits intocontemporary attempts to process and visualise the sprawling city.