William Blake’s Imagination Research

18th century great English romantic poet William Blake (1757-1827) is one of themost complex poet in the history of British literature，even in the history of worldliterature, imagination is the first principle of his understanding the world and of hiswriting, he regards the real world as "spirit construction ". In his opinion, it is onlythrough effective use the energy of the imagination to realize a bond between man andnature, individual person will be free in the imagination. Imagination is the foundation ofBlake’s poetics, art, religious thought, philosophy and ethics thought.This paper uses social criticism, cultural criticism, comparative literature andpsychology and so on many kinds of literary criticism methods as the basic researchmethods to discuss Blake’s imagination, in order to understanding the essence of Blake’simagination, and it’s helpful to better understand the Blake poets and paintings.The first chapter discusses the origin of Blake’s imagination，mainly from threeaspects including the background, Blake’s own temperament and thought influence. Thesecond chapter analyzes the text closely and study the ideas of Blake’s imagination, fromthe imagination’s ontology, fourfold imagination, the relationship between imaginationand human, imagination and nature, summarize and analyze the content and meanings ofhis theory of imagination.. In the third chapter combs particularity of Blake’simagination: dialectical, symbolic and philosophical. The idea of Blake’s imagination isa unity of opposites, and it has the divine form, includes a poetic wisdom. The fourthchapter summarizes the idea of imagination and the imaginative world of his poetry, it isa unity, it’s an ideal world, it’s a God’s world, it is a joyful world. It not only realizes theunition of Blake’s aesthetics, philosophy, religion, but also the harmony of them.Epilogue summarizes the special significance of Blake’s imagination in modern society.