블레이크의 예루살렘: 타락과 구원의 드라마

Abstract

Yeop KangJerusalem is the greatest epic poem among William Blake's poetic works. But lengthy critical works on Jerusalem are few, probably due to the difficulty of the poem, which presumes a thorough familiarity with Blake's earlier poetry. Most studies remain at the level of establishing the epic's coherence and making it scrutable.Blake made it clear that the nature of his poetic works was visionary or imaginative; it was an endeavor to restore what the ancients called the Golden Age. He also said that the Old and the New Testaments are the great code of art. With these viewpoints in mind, this paper aims to examine the process of man's fall and redemption in Jerusalem.The theme of Jerusalem is on man's fall and salvation. Blake, like Los, moves toward the end by turning back to the origin, regains the Golden Age by working through to the end. In the final form of Blake's myth of history, Albion is reawakened into the brotherhood of Eden by Los, the artist as awakener. Blake's vital message to us in Jerusalem concerns the awakening of Albion, the opening of the spiritual eye of every man and woman. Jerusalem is the regaining of community: the regaining of identity multiplied fourfold in Albion, who rouses his cities and counties and his twenty-eight cities, and ultimately the whole of mankind.