Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
5-1989
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
English
Major Professor
Nancy M. Goslee
Committee Members
David Lee, Edawrd W. Bratton, B. J. Leggett
Abstract
In my dissertation I seek to extricate and elucidate the fascinating conceptual parallels between the works of William Blake, Johann Georg Hamann, and Jakob Boehme. These radical Christian visionaries evince a social vision which anticipates and parallels major Marxian tenets. I believe their writings are primarily concerned to confront what they perceived as the false, distortive ideologies of their epochs with what might be termed visionary warfare. In my introduction I discuss the various manners in which all three of these visionaries have been wrongly branded as mystics, and stress how antithetical to mysticism their works are. In Chapter II I examine their highly practical, radical conceptions of the creative imagination and its profound transformative powers, powers which they posited in opposition to the superiority accorded to rationalism in their own eras. I then move in Chapter III to an analysis of each writer's attack upon contemporary aesthetic ideologies and the more vibrant formal and stylistic values each proffered as alternatives. In Chapter IV, I show that each author asserted history as a tapestry woven by humanity, and sought to awaken everyone to their necessary role in its making.
Recommended Citation
Bethea, Dean Wentworth, "Visionary warfare : Blake, Hamann, and Boehme against ideology. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1989.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/11613