Ann Yearsley and the British Abolitionist Movement

Ann Yearsley 1753-1806
Like most Romantic period writers, you can find a rather vague overall description about this female writer on Wikipedia with a good overall bibliography of her work. Yearsley married into the farming community and continued her love of literature from her mother's faithful acts of bringing books home for Ann to read.
Yearsley lived a very hard-working and laborious lifestyle before she became discovered as a writer. You can learn extensively about Yearsley leading up to her discovery as a writer in an excerpt from Ann Yearsley's Biography on BookRags. Yearsley was controversial during her time due to her interaction with Hannah More (a patron of Yearsley with higher social status) during the time that she was forced to leave her cottage with six children and one on the way. You can find more information on this interaction between these two women in a shorter biography. Yearsley's interaction with More was detrimental to her writing because More was a member of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. There is a wonderful and descriptive biography on Hannah More in the Brycchan Carey website with various links to her poetry like "Slavery, a Poem" which is similar to Yearsley but, in my opinion, a lot more authoritative, powerful, and forceful.

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Yearsley and More are only a few of the women (and men) involved in the British Abolitionist Movement. A lot of these participants were also radicals in favor of the French Revolution. There is a wonderful page on the Anti-Slavery website that gives a rather extensive History on the British Abolitionist movement for those students that find themselves intrigued by the powerful voice of abolitionists like Yearsley. There is also a great description in this website about Charles Buxton: a radical trying to make an act in 1833 on Slavery Abolition.
One last resource to look at as a means to understand the roles of Romantic authors and poets with the British Abolitionist Movement is one on Abolitionist Literature from this era; "the Poetical Milkwoman of Bristol" (aka Yearsley) is just one among the many frustrated authors fed up with the skewed perception of Christianity in society and the mistreatment of others.

Friday response #2: Blake or Yearsley

Post it here, by these Blake engravings commissioned for a project entitled: Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America, from the year 1772, to 1777

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And if you recall, there was a plate I wanted to show you of Urizen in fetters, but had loaned out. This is Urizen in his dream of infinite divisions. It's one of Blake's most poignant images of "mind forg'd manacles": slavery.

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Blake and Taoism

Alright y’all, this may be a little incoherent (and for some reason the text changes throughout -now you all know i'm computer illiterate), but here goes.

When reading the two syllogisms of Blake’s that we read (No Natural Religion and All Religions Being One), something that jumped out to me was what struck me as a great number of connections to the East Asian philosophy of Taoism. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell struck me in the same way. After searching a little bit online, I found this is a connection that has been explored before, though to what depth I couldn’t say. Anyway, I thought I’d just point out a couple of connections that I found. The texts being used are a work of Chuang Tzu (Discussion on Making All Things Equal) , a taoist writing around 4^th century BCE (more at the wikipedia site (yes, it’s wikipedia, but it’s a fine introduction)) and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

First up is Plate 4 of Marriage

THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL

All Bibles or sacred codes, have been the causes of the following Errors.

1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.

2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True.

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is Eternal Delight. (pg xvi)

This is clear an echo of a sentiment of Chuang Tzu’s

The hundred joints, the nine openings, the six organs, all come together and exist here [as my body]. But which part should I feel closest to? I should delight in all parts, you say? But there must be one I ought to favor more. If not, are they all of them mere servants? But if they are all servants, then how can they keep order among themselves? Or do they take turns being lord and servant? It would seem as though there must be some True Lord among them. But whether I succeed in discovering his identity or not, it neither adds to nor detracts from his Truth (pg 38).

In both these statements, the authors are saying that humans cannot be divorced from their bodies. Just as Chuang Tzu urges we cannot find the seat of consciousness, Blake argues that our bodies are “portion[s] of Soul.”

The conflation of two things usually viewed as separate is one of the most important themes of both of these works. Chuang Tzu presents one of the most effective images on the problems that arise with making clear distinctions between two things:

Everything has its "that," everything has its "this." From the point of view of "that" you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say, "that" comes out of "this" and "this" depends on "that" - which is to say that "this" and "that" give birth to each other. But where there is birth there must be death; where there is death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there must be unacceptability; where there is unacceptability there must be acceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of Heaven.6 He too recognizes a "this," but a "this" which is also "that," a "that" which is also "this." His "that" has both a right and a wrong in it; his "this" too has both a right and a wrong in it. So, in fact, does he still have a "this" and "that"? Or does he in fact no longer have a "this" and "that"? A state in which "this" and "that" no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So, I say, the best thing to use is clarity (pg 39).

And, much more succinctly,

What is acceptable we call acceptable; what is unacceptable we call unacceptable. A road is made by people walking on it; things are so because they are called so. What makes them so? Making them so makes them so. What makes them not so? Making them not so makes them not so. Things all must have that which is so; things all must have that which is acceptable. There is nothing that is not so, nothing that is not acceptable (pg 40).

This is a belief very evident in Marriage as well. Blake praises Milton by saying :

Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it (plate 6)

And when Blake criticizes Swedenborg saying “Swedenborg has not written one new truth” and “he has written all the old falsehoods,” the reason he gives is this: “He conversed with Angels who are all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion, for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions” (plate 22). This is also evidenced in plate 20 in which the Angel showing Blake his fate says his “eternal lot” is “between the black and white spiders,” and is further tied to Blake’s critique of reason seen in plate four, above. Perhaps the best example of this in Blake, however, is in the third plate, in which he says

Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy.

And finally, also tied into all this, in plate 19, when Blake is shown his future, he sees the true nature of his fate after the angel leaves him. Here, he says, “All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics,” then Blake takes the angel to show him his fate, after which the angel says, “thy phantasy has imposed upon me & thou oughtest to be ashamed.” To which Blake replies, “we impose on one another.”

All this is simply a further example of the questions raised about labels (“this” and “that”) and ideas of right and wrong. It is exemplified in Chuang Tzu in the section deemed

Lady Li was the daughter of the border guard of Ai. When she was first taken captive and brought to the state of Chin, she wept until her tears drenched the collar of her robe. But later, when she went to live in the palace of the ruler, shared his couch with him, and ate the delicious meats of his table, she wondered why she had ever wept. How do I know that the dead do not wonder why they ever longed for life? (pg 47).

So that’s the gist of it. Just giving you a taste of the connections I think are pretty obvious. I definitely recommend checking out the rest of Chuang Tzu’s work (the entirety of them are provided in a link below (in a pretty sweet translation to boot)).

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. London: Oxford University Press,

1975.

Tzu, Chuang. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Trans. Watson, Burton. New York:

Columbia University Press, 1968.

Complete works found at these sites, for convenience.

http://www.terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html

http://www.gailgastfield.com/mhh/mhh.html

William Blake: 1757-1827

First, Blake's Wikipedia entry should provide a (very, very) brief introduction to the poet's life and work. A better starting point especially for those aspiring Blake scholars who have taken a strong interest in the visual accompaniment to the poetry might be the William Blake Archive, which, along with displaying an absolutely beautiful example of the artist's work on its main page, contains an impressive database of plates, including the material unforgivably omitted from the Wu Anthology. Accompanying some helpful biographical details, Turning the Pages offers a stunning direct copy of one of Blake's notebooks, and explains the content of each of its pages--thus the website title--with a fair amount of detail. Fellow students who find themselves fascinated by the poet's various quirks might want to take note of the observation on the introduction page that Blake turned his notebook upside-down when he ran out of space in order to continue working. To go with the images I linked to earlier, here are Blake's complete works, edited by David V. Erdman.

Now, because I believe that contextualization never hurts, I've decided to bring up a contemporary artist who I've associated with Blake or his artistic lineage, as it were, since I discovered him. The artist Joe Coleman, distinguished by his meticulous, disturbing work and his unhealthy obsession with geek acts and freak shows, which I won't link to in the spirit of civility, shares several uncanny stylistic and philosophical tendencies with Blake. Like the poet, he believes that creation and destruction are directly related, and that order and purity are not only undesirable, but unachievable. His art also relies on a highly personalized vision and symbolic order--and on a nightmarish eschatological mentality which is equally thrilling and terrifying. Picking Coleman's contemporary works apart over the years has, I think, prepared me for the intense personal involvement called for in reading Blake. The poet doesn't just demand analysis and explication--his work calls for introspection, and at least for me, a revision of perspective. I believe that the work is as influential as it is because it was written to a certain extent for the poet's own sake, because it aims not to reinterpret but to create anew, and with Blake's imagination as its source. This is the poetry of the self, and it imposes self-evaluation on the reader just as its composition must have transformed the thoughts of the poet.

Some Swedenborg

An excerpt from Emanuel Swedenborg's Heaven and its Wonders and Hell from Project Gutenberg to give you a better sense of the text that Blake is parodying in Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

553. All spirits in the hells, when seen in any light of heaven, appear in the form of their evil; for everyone there is an image of his evil, since his interiors and his exteriors act as a one, the interiors making themselves visible in the exteriors, which are the face, body, speech and movements; thus the character of the spirit is known as soon as he is seen. In general evil spirits are forms of contempt of others and of menaces against those who do not pay them respect; the are forms of hatreds of various kinds, also of various kinds of revenge. Fierceness and cruelty from their interiors show through these forms. But when they are commended, venerated, and worshiped by others their faces are restrained and take on an expression of gladness from delight. [2] It is impossible to describe in a few words how all these forms appear, for no one is like another, although there is a general likeness among those who are in the same evil, and thus in the same infernal society, from which, as from a plane of derivation, the faces of all are seen to have a certain resemblance. In general their faces are hideous, and void of life like those of corpses; the faces of some are black, others fiery like torches, others disfigured with pimples, warts, and ulcers; some seem to have no face, but in its stead something hairy or bony; and with some only the teeth are seen; their bodies also are monstrous; and their speech is like the speech of anger or of hatred or of revenge; for what everyone speaks is from his falsity, while his tone is from his evil. In a word, they are all images of their own hell. (257)

(Click on text for the online book; click "next page" to keep reading)

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