A Bíblia do Inferno de William Blake: visão como força imaginativa

Abstract

The central goal of the present dissertation is to understand the particular aesthetics of the works composed by William Blake (1757 – 1827), characterized by a combination of visuality and mystical discourse. As Blake was a poet-engraver, the marriage of text and image is the most remarkable aspect of the pages he composed through his peculiar printing technique. The proper analyses will be carried out from a specific selection of Blake‘s works, considering his particular philosophy, established in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), and his own mythology, whose sample is represented by a trio of poems that we can call ―the books of Urizen‖: The First Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Ahania (1795) and The Book of Los (1795). Not only passages from his poems will be analyzed, but also specific images from these poems will be examined, both illustrations and illuminations. The theoretical discussion will approach the following topics: the notion of prophecy as a literary genre, the relationship between the Blakean discourse and the Gnostic heresies, the particularities of the Blakean iconophilia, the tension between monism and dualism in Blake‘s work, as well as the affiliation of the poet to the tradition of mystical thinkers and his relation to the literary tradition itself. The conceptual axis around which this dissertation will be developed is the so-called Bible of Hell, a satirical idea conceived by the poet-engraver as an aesthetic symbol of his own posture towards the religious morality.