Abstract

Sixth and Seventh, I draw two analogous parallels between Blake's metaphorical synthesis of the cosmos into the Eternal form of the One Man Jesus and the Christian synthesis of the Godhead of the Trinity and the pauline synthesis of membership in the Body of Christ. ;I analyze closely many poetic and prose passages reflecting aspects of Blake's metaphorical transforming vision from certain of the poet's early and later works. The last chapter is a short conclusion. ;Fifth, I develop similar comparisons and contrasts between Blake's metaphorical transforming vision and Owen Barfield's doctrine of visionary participation. ;Third, I focus on the concept of metaphor as a mode of perception that makes Blake's fourfold transforming vision possible. ;Fourth, I concentrate upon relevant comparisons and contrasts between Blake's metaphorical transforming vision and Martin Buber's I-Thou relation. ;Second, my critical thesis reinterprets Blake's fourfold vision as the process of a mode of metaphorical transforming vision capable of eliminating all awareness of plurality and separation and of reconstituting and totally reunifying man and the cosmos in a vision of cosmic Identity. ;I discuss seven aspects of development of my critical thesis: First, this study focuses for the first time specifically on the visionary's awareness of the problem of the One and the many and of Blake's poetic attempt to overcome this sense of paradox in a cosmos of confusing plurality and discontinuity. I show that this awareness was the direct motivation for Blake to seek to envision the cosmos as a total perceptual Unity. ;My use of "metaphor" in the conceptual context of this study has a more expansive meaning than the word ordinarily has in poetic and rhetorical applications. Understood as a figure of speech, "metaphor" commonly expresses a stated or implied comparison and relationship in which one idea, quality, or object is represented figuratively as being another. Such poetic usage may imply only an unchanging, static relationship and not necessarily an identity; and a relationship may imply the principle of separate, static, relational existence of one entity and of another. But Blake's visionary cosmos was not one of perceptual relationships and separations but, rather, one of perceptual Unity expressed poetically; therefore, his sense and use of the function went well beyond the more common understanding of these characteristics of the potential and usage of metaphor. Often Blake used metaphors that combine the representational power of the symbol with the added capacity of some metaphors to transform operationally one perception into the dynamic and transforming image of another perception, thus making possible the expanding of perception into a metaphorical mode of synoptical, unifying visionary identity. Such metaphors I designate "dynamic transforming metaphors." Such perceptual process I refer to as "dynamic metaphorical transformation," and Blake's mode of fourfold synoptical perception I designate his "metaphorical transforming vision." I argue that it is within such an expanding visionary mode of cosmic perception that Blake imaginatively transforms the "many," the plurality and rationally perceived multiplicity of the present world perceived through the senses, into the "One," the transforming vision of the cosmos perceived through the imagination as metaphorical Unity. As Blake expresses the process, "In Eternity All is Vision." ;This present study examines the operation of William Blake's visionary solution to the traditional perceptual problem of the One and the many. My thesis is that Blake's "fourfold vision" operates as a transforming insight capable of unifying the cosmos in metaphorical visionary perception. Such vision I designate Blake's "metaphorical transforming vision." This work emphasizes the visionary process whereby this metaphorical transforming vision occurs.