A Defamiliarized World Of Imagination In Blake’s Jerusalem

Born and brought up in London,William Blake(1757-1827)was a poet,painter and philosopher with a truly pious and loving soul.Though neglected and misunderstood by most people at his time,he created an artistic world integrating religion,mythology,philosophy,poetry and painting.The nature of William Blake’s genius and of his art is completely expressed in his illuminated books,among which,Jerusalem: The Emanation of Giant Albion embodies the highly artistic achievement of William Blake.The poem,as Blake’s longest single work,consists of 100 etched and illustrated plates,which were made using Blake’s self-devised technique of “illuminated printing”.At over 4500 lines,Jerusalem is the longest and the most magnificent of Blake’s illuminated books and his most unfathomable as well.Blake worked on Jerusalem from 1804 to 1820,a period during which Britain was mostly at war with France.In Jerusalem,Albion,a representation of England,is infected with a “soul disease” and he falls in consequence of the Napoleonic wars.Religion exists merely to help monarchy and clergy exploit the lower class.Greed and war have obscured the true message of Christ.However,if Albion can be reunited with Jerusalem,which is his soul of liberty,all humanity will once again be bound together by the ties of love.William Blake states in Jerusalem that instead of reasoning and comparing,he will create.He creates a system of mythology through poetry and illuminated painting,where the Bible serves as the symbolic text conveying profound meaning.The world he creates in this epic poem is a world transcended from the corrupting religion and the scientific materialism in his age.Throughout the poem,features of defamiliarization find themselves in both the narrative of the story and the poetic language.The composite art of imagery text and descriptive illustrations also serves for the purpose of forcing the audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or a strange way in order to enhance diverse perceptions of the familiar.The thesis attempts to explore what was created by Blake’s imagination from the perspective of defamiliarization.Chapter One clarifies the symbolic meanings of some main characters who always appear in different forms and interact with each other,the reason of which is that the process of Albion’s fall and regeneration is presented in nonlinear dramatic movement.Thus the story is made intricate by the defamiliarized narrative,exposing the world of chaos and discomposure.Chapter Two analyzes the unusual poetic language including arbitrary parallelism and punctuation used in this poem that fills the poem of dynamic uncertainty and diverse possibilities.Chapter Three illustrates Blake’s uniqueness in his combination of visual design and depictive words in Jerusalem.Both the words and pictures are profound in meaning and open to imagination,leading readers to a world that is different from the reality.The conclusion thus is drawn that devices of defamiliarization contribute to Blake’s creation of his mythology in a defamiliarized world where the narrative,language and illustrations are open to diverse possibilities.The familiar characters or images are rearranged to create a multilevel world that can be only approached by imagination and that prolongs readers’ appreciation.