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.
목차
Ⅰ. 들어가며 Ⅱ. 판화가 또는 삽화가의 길 Ⅲ. 『순수의 노래』(1789), 『경험의 노래』(1789-94),『순수와 경험의 노래』(1794) Ⅳ. 『순수의 노래』와 『경험의 노래』에 나타나는 삽화의 특징 Ⅴ. 상호텍스트성과 능동적 읽기 Ⅵ. 나아가며 참고문헌 Abstract
키워드
윌리엄 블레이크순수의 노래경험의 노래순수와 경험의 노래채색시집이미지와 텍스트시와 미술상호매체성상호텍스트성William BlakeSongs of InnocenceSongs of ExperienceSongs of Innocence and ExperienceIlluminated BooksImage and TextPoetry and ArtIntermedialityIntertextuality
한국미술이론학회는 미술이론의 고유한 역할과 방향을 모색하고자 창립되었다. 미술창작과 해석에 필요한 제반이론을 생산하고 다양한 미술현장의 활동을 검증하고 비판하며 연구하는 학회로서 미술의 이론과 실제사이의 분리현상을 극복하는데 기여하고자 한다. 현재 미술관련 학회들의 성격이 대부분 이론영역에 치중해있고, 학과나 전공에 특화되어 있는데 반하여, 본 학회는 미술의 현장과 창작과정을 적극 반영하고 미학, 미술사 등 기존의 미술이론 영역 뿐 아니라 실기와 미술교육, 경영, 행정, 전시 등 다양한 분야를 총괄하는 학제 간 연구를 활성화시키고자 한다. 앞으로 다양한 미술이론 영역에 대한 심도 있는 연구는 물론 한국미술계의 발전과 변화에 조력할 수 있는 실천적이고 생산적인 미술이론의 형성에 본 학회는 최선을 다할 것이다.