michaelgriffith (michaelgriffith) wrote,
michaelgriffith
michaelgriffith

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Visionary Imagination has moved into Blake's major prophetic works with a week on The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.    I was pleased to see the penny drop for many of you after we worked our way through that visionary conversation between the Angel and the Devil in "The Memorable Fancy" beginning in Plate 17. I also sensed that many of you went away from the lecture with more of a sense of how this work hangs together around the key ideas of the importance of the contraries in human experience and the need to see beyond material vision, to clean the "doors of perception". I forgot to mention that the rock band The Doors gained their name and much of their inspiration from Blake's ideas in this poem (Check out their single "Break on Through to the Other Side". 

Here are a few juicy topics to challenge our seasoned BlakeBloggers:

CREATIVE: Take any line from The Marriage and build your own poem or prose vision....

CREATIVE: Write a letter to William Blake explaining to him why you think his ideas have relevance to today's society.

CRITICAL:  Take any one section of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and explain in simple language what you think are its core ideas and their relevance to what you now see as Blake's key poetic ideas. 

CRITICAL: Produce a short web document that illustrates the way in which Blake's idea about "The Doors of Perception" has stimulated the work and ideas of some other artists [eg Patti Smith, The Doors, Aldous Huxley.....] 

PLEASE rembember you are at liberty to create your own topics and please be sure to comment regularly on the blogs of others in the VISIONARY IMAGINATION GROUP- Find all their addresses in LEO- Right Here
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