윌리엄 블레이크의 채색시집 『순수와 경험의 노래』에 나타난 상호매체성과 상호텍스트성 (Intermediality and Intertextuality in Blake’s Illuminated Book, Songs of Innocence and of Experience)

서지정보

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· 저자명 : 김진아

초록

William Blake, regarded as one of the great Romantic poets, was a prolific painter, printer, and engraver as well. Yet, he did not receive due credit for his work during his time. For a long time, his graphic art and literature were treated in isolation from each other; literary critics focused only on his poems and art historians on his engravings or paintings. Recently, attempts to see his work, particularly his illuminated books, as a “composite art” or as a synthesis of word and image have increased. I will also consider his work as a kind of open text in a poststructuralists’ notion, which blurs the boundaries between them and encourages readings as textual performance.
In this paper, I will first show how Blake differentiated himself from other painters, engravers, and publishers by devising his own way of creating and printing illuminated books. Next, focusing on his earlier work, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, I will briefly discuss the characteristics of his illustration and the content of his poems. Finally, I demonstrate how Songs makes for unique reading in which the reader is an ongoing participant in its textuality, crossing between words and words, and words and images.
The advent of the Industrial Revolution brought with it an increase in mass publication, and the distinction between fine art and designs or craftsmanship was yet to be clarified. Against such distinction, Blake created a unique method of "relief-etching", through which he combined text and engraved illustration on a single copper plate and hand-colored the prints. Each copy thus remains a unique work of art. His illuminated books envision interdisciplinary and multimedia text and question the modern system of classification and hierarchies between poem and painting, painting and engraving, art and literature.
In the images of Songs, we see Blake’s profound interest in Gothic art as “divine” work. For example, he persisted in using firm outlines that were characteristic of Gothic art. Like other Romantic poets, Blake believed the imagination and God’s spirit to be manifest in outline rather than color. The letter was regarded to be appealing to the sensuality of the eyes. On the other hand, the poems in Songs reflect the dialectical relationship and synthesis in which “innocence” might be wedded to “experience,” as its subtitle Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Souls implies.
Songs is, however, not to be read by isolating the poems from the illustrations. In the introduction of Songs of Innocence, Blake proposed the intricate and conflicting relationship between speech, writing, and painting. The title page also suggests that children are not merely passive learners imitating the nurse’s reading but active readers-seers who may better understand Blake’s illuminated books. Further, this paper, after the examination of a few poems, attempts to show that the images do not necessarily illustrate the poems and can rather create a link between different parts of the text. This rejects the traditional critical hierarchy of word over image. Blake’s work indeed opens up an infinite vortex, that is, the textuality, as Roland Barthes or other post-structuralists might call it, and invites us to participate as active readers.

영어초록

William Blake, regarded as one of the great Romantic poets, was a prolific painter, printer, and engraver as well. Yet, he did not receive due credit for his work during his time. For a long time, his graphic art and literature were treated in isolation from each other; literary critics focused only on his poems and art historians on his engravings or paintings. Recently, attempts to see his work, particularly his illuminated books, as a “composite art” or as a synthesis of word and image have increased. I will also consider his work as a kind of open text in a poststructuralists’ notion, which blurs the boundaries between them and encourages readings as textual performance.
In this paper, I will first show how Blake differentiated himself from other painters, engravers, and publishers by devising his own way of creating and printing illuminated books. Next, focusing on his earlier work, Songs of Innocence and of Experience, I will briefly discuss the characteristics of his illustration and the content of his poems. Finally, I demonstrate how Songs makes for unique reading in which the reader is an ongoing participant in its textuality, crossing between words and words, and words and images.
The advent of the Industrial Revolution brought with it an increase in mass publication, and the distinction between fine art and designs or craftsmanship was yet to be clarified. Against such distinction, Blake created a unique method of "relief-etching", through which he combined text and engraved illustration on a single copper plate and hand-colored the prints. Each copy thus remains a unique work of art. His illuminated books envision interdisciplinary and multimedia text and question the modern system of classification and hierarchies between poem and painting, painting and engraving, art and literature.
In the images of Songs, we see Blake’s profound interest in Gothic art as “divine” work. For example, he persisted in using firm outlines that were characteristic of Gothic art. Like other Romantic poets, Blake believed the imagination and God’s spirit to be manifest in outline rather than color. The letter was regarded to be appealing to the sensuality of the eyes. On the other hand, the poems in Songs reflect the dialectical relationship and synthesis in which “innocence” might be wedded to “experience,” as its subtitle Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Souls implies.
Songs is, however, not to be read by isolating the poems from the illustrations. In the introduction of Songs of Innocence, Blake proposed the intricate and conflicting relationship between speech, writing, and painting. The title page also suggests that children are not merely passive learners imitating the nurse’s reading but active readers-seers who may better understand Blake’s illuminated books. Further, this paper, after the examination of a few poems, attempts to show that the images do not necessarily illustrate the poems and can rather create a link between different parts of the text. This rejects the traditional critical hierarchy of word over image. Blake’s work indeed opens up an infinite vortex, that is, the textuality, as Roland Barthes or other post-structuralists might call it, and invites us to participate as active readers.

참고자료

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