Incarnations of Heaven: A Study of Fantastic Imagination and the Complications Inherent to Identity Creation in the Works of William Blake

Abstract

This thesis project discusses William Blake’s work and observes the destructive nature of capitalist ideologies through the fantastic and its connection to divine imagination. In the opening section, various aspects of Blake's poetry are explored through the lens of Emancipative Fantastic theory, giving attention to how Marxist theory and fantasy come together in order to demonstrate Blake' s need for the imaginative eye when viewing the world. Through the theories of Marx and Althusser, Althusser's reading and definition of Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses specifically, this project employs the two principles of Marx and Althusser in conjunction with Rosemary Jackson's definition of the fantastic mode, to study Blake's work more fully. Aspects of individual identity formation, immortality, and alienation are discussed in the second section. In the concluding section, the project discusses the idea that Blake’s work hints at the loss of imagination as an indication and prelude to the apocalypse.