JamesWhitehead
Piffle Prospector
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2001
- Messages
- 14,209
I don't think we have had a thread devoted to England's greatest
creative genius. He is difficult but endlessly rewarding. His religious
affiliations have been much discussed but there has been a breakthrough
with regard to the esoteric religious background of his mother. She was
long thought to have been a Londoner and Blake has often been treated
as a quintessential Cockney. Now we know a little about his roots in the
Midlands!
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,1160555,00.html
Connection revealed between erotic writers and artists
Martin Wainwright
Wednesday March 3, 2004
The Guardian
William Blake ... his family's 'wanton practices' pre-dated Lady Chatterley's Lover by 200 years
_Britain's first "literary erogenous zone" is about to bring a new type of tourist to a quiet corner of the east Midlands, thanks to a £110,000 project to research the background of the artist and poet William Blake.
Academics in Nottingham have traced the mother of the great visionary, whose work is shot through with erotic imagery, to a village close to the birthplace of that other sexually pioneering writer, DH Lawrence.
The two-year programme is expected to uncover the full and previously unsuspected Midlands background of Blake, including his family's involvement with radical sectarians whose "wanton practices" pre-dated Lady Chatterley's Lover by 200 years.
The team at Nottingham Trent University traced the birthplace of Blake's mother Catherine - long a mysterious figure - to the village of Walkeringham, north of Retford, where an 18th-century branch of the Moravian Brethren took vigorous root.
The group's beliefs, including reverence for women's genitals as "a model of the chapel of God where husbands must worship daily", are expected to shed new light on the origins of Blake's own sexual enthusiasm.
Blake praised "happy copulation" and was famously discovered by a neighbour nude in his London garden, acting out with his wife the return of Adam into paradise.
"Blake's family background has been the subject of much speculation and rumour," said Professor David Worrall of Nottingham Trent, a Blake specialist who will lead the project.
"He was even claimed for Ireland by Yeats, but there's no evidence of that. It now turns out that his roots were in this little Nottinghamshire village. In a sense, we are bringing him back to his proper home."
The study, funded by the government's Arts and Humanities Research Board, will scour record offices in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire for further details of Catherine Wright - as Blake's mother was known before her marriage to Blake's father.
Walkeringham, which had a population of 419 at the first national census in 1801 (it is now 849), has a Wright Avenue.
Moravian archives in London and Leeds are expected to fill in other gaps.
Catherine was assumed to have been a Londoner, until research in Moravian records by Dr Keri Davies, another member of the Nottingham Trent team, led to the Midlands link.
She is thought to have been an important influence on her talented son, teaching him until he was apprenticed to an engraver at the age of 13.
Her own education was helped by the Moravians, who required would-be converts to submit a home-composed hymn with the application to join. Catherine's has been recovered by the Nottingham Trent researchers, along with details of her first husband, who also belonged to the sect.
"She's likely to have influenced the way Blake spoke," Prof Worrall said. "I'd assumed all my working life that he talked like a Cockney, but now we can begin to think of him as a man who may have had the remnants of a Nottinghamshire accent."
The county, currently engaged in a battle with Yorkshire about which was Robin Hood's birthplace, has not yet thought in detail about promoting the discovery.
But tours could easily link Walkeringham with Lawrence's birthplace, Eastwood, via beauty spots such as Old Teversal, the reputed inspiration for the Chatterley estate.
Blake's most popular creation, Jerusalem, continues to be heard, among other places, at the Women's Institute, whose Calendar Girls are very much in the spirit which Catherine appears to have passed on to her son.
creative genius. He is difficult but endlessly rewarding. His religious
affiliations have been much discussed but there has been a breakthrough
with regard to the esoteric religious background of his mother. She was
long thought to have been a Londoner and Blake has often been treated
as a quintessential Cockney. Now we know a little about his roots in the
Midlands!
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,1160555,00.html
Connection revealed between erotic writers and artists
Martin Wainwright
Wednesday March 3, 2004
The Guardian
William Blake ... his family's 'wanton practices' pre-dated Lady Chatterley's Lover by 200 years
_Britain's first "literary erogenous zone" is about to bring a new type of tourist to a quiet corner of the east Midlands, thanks to a £110,000 project to research the background of the artist and poet William Blake.
Academics in Nottingham have traced the mother of the great visionary, whose work is shot through with erotic imagery, to a village close to the birthplace of that other sexually pioneering writer, DH Lawrence.
The two-year programme is expected to uncover the full and previously unsuspected Midlands background of Blake, including his family's involvement with radical sectarians whose "wanton practices" pre-dated Lady Chatterley's Lover by 200 years.
The team at Nottingham Trent University traced the birthplace of Blake's mother Catherine - long a mysterious figure - to the village of Walkeringham, north of Retford, where an 18th-century branch of the Moravian Brethren took vigorous root.
The group's beliefs, including reverence for women's genitals as "a model of the chapel of God where husbands must worship daily", are expected to shed new light on the origins of Blake's own sexual enthusiasm.
Blake praised "happy copulation" and was famously discovered by a neighbour nude in his London garden, acting out with his wife the return of Adam into paradise.
"Blake's family background has been the subject of much speculation and rumour," said Professor David Worrall of Nottingham Trent, a Blake specialist who will lead the project.
"He was even claimed for Ireland by Yeats, but there's no evidence of that. It now turns out that his roots were in this little Nottinghamshire village. In a sense, we are bringing him back to his proper home."
The study, funded by the government's Arts and Humanities Research Board, will scour record offices in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire for further details of Catherine Wright - as Blake's mother was known before her marriage to Blake's father.
Walkeringham, which had a population of 419 at the first national census in 1801 (it is now 849), has a Wright Avenue.
Moravian archives in London and Leeds are expected to fill in other gaps.
Catherine was assumed to have been a Londoner, until research in Moravian records by Dr Keri Davies, another member of the Nottingham Trent team, led to the Midlands link.
She is thought to have been an important influence on her talented son, teaching him until he was apprenticed to an engraver at the age of 13.
Her own education was helped by the Moravians, who required would-be converts to submit a home-composed hymn with the application to join. Catherine's has been recovered by the Nottingham Trent researchers, along with details of her first husband, who also belonged to the sect.
"She's likely to have influenced the way Blake spoke," Prof Worrall said. "I'd assumed all my working life that he talked like a Cockney, but now we can begin to think of him as a man who may have had the remnants of a Nottinghamshire accent."
The county, currently engaged in a battle with Yorkshire about which was Robin Hood's birthplace, has not yet thought in detail about promoting the discovery.
But tours could easily link Walkeringham with Lawrence's birthplace, Eastwood, via beauty spots such as Old Teversal, the reputed inspiration for the Chatterley estate.
Blake's most popular creation, Jerusalem, continues to be heard, among other places, at the Women's Institute, whose Calendar Girls are very much in the spirit which Catherine appears to have passed on to her son.
