Childhood Imagination in the Works of William Blake and C.S. Lewis
Nylund, Joanna (2024)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024033013738
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2024033013738
Tiivistelmä
William Blake, born 1757, was an engraver-artist and writer known largely for creating his own visually stirring, trailblazing mythology and for challenging the theological teachings and hegemony of the Church in British society at the time. C.S. Lewis, born 1898, was a literary academic, writer and lay theologian who greatly influenced Christian thought and is perhaps best-known today as the creator of the children’s book series The Chronicles of Narnia. At the initiative of Lewis, these two authors came to enter into a cross-century literary dialogue as Lewis wrote his novel The Great Divorce partly in response to Blake’s illustrated prophecy The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
This thesis, taking the form of a comparative analysis of the two authors, asks whether one very important facet of their personal philosophies, namely imagination, can be traced back to childhood formation and early influences. The approach is historical-biographical, with philosophy providing an additional angle of research. Examples from the literary output of both authors are analysed with a view towards underlying ascribed philosophical meanings of childhood, adulthood, and the importance of imagination. The works analysed are William Blake’s collection of poems Songs of Innocence and Experience and C.S. Lewis’s novels The Chronicles of Narnia.
The analysis indicates strong correlations between the two authors in terms of childhood influences, especially through reading, and regarding the value both placed on their childhoods as philosophically formative periods of time. The role that the faculty of imagination played in their later creative output can be traced back to childhood. There are also indications that the spiritual views of both authors were inextricably linked to early imaginative experiences. One conclusion of this thesis is thus that, although ostensibly very different, William Blake and C.S. Lewis shared a distinctive set of inner circumstances that would prove essential to their literary lives, and would therefore also independently lead them to literary explorations in the same spiritual vein.
This thesis, taking the form of a comparative analysis of the two authors, asks whether one very important facet of their personal philosophies, namely imagination, can be traced back to childhood formation and early influences. The approach is historical-biographical, with philosophy providing an additional angle of research. Examples from the literary output of both authors are analysed with a view towards underlying ascribed philosophical meanings of childhood, adulthood, and the importance of imagination. The works analysed are William Blake’s collection of poems Songs of Innocence and Experience and C.S. Lewis’s novels The Chronicles of Narnia.
The analysis indicates strong correlations between the two authors in terms of childhood influences, especially through reading, and regarding the value both placed on their childhoods as philosophically formative periods of time. The role that the faculty of imagination played in their later creative output can be traced back to childhood. There are also indications that the spiritual views of both authors were inextricably linked to early imaginative experiences. One conclusion of this thesis is thus that, although ostensibly very different, William Blake and C.S. Lewis shared a distinctive set of inner circumstances that would prove essential to their literary lives, and would therefore also independently lead them to literary explorations in the same spiritual vein.
Kokoelmat
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