English Language and Literature ETDs

Ann B. Dunlap

Publication Date

7-6-1973

Abstract

The problem posed by this study is that of achieving a reasonable understanding of Blake's enigmatic poem, “The Mental Traveller,” through a systematic study of the poem's critics. "The Mental Traveller” was selected for such intensive and isolated analysis because it is in many ways a microcosm of Blake's later, larger works. The method used is simply to take the twenty-seven major commentaries on the poem in chronological order, summarize and analyze them. The results of this survey produced insights into the methodology of Blakean critics as well as ideas concerning the meaning of the poem. The methods of the critics of “The Mental Traveller” fall into three general categories: reading the poem by the light of other Blake poems and the myth of the Zoas, reading it by the light of source study findings, and reading it closely, line-by-line as an entity in itself. No one method is successful when used by itself. Too often users of the first method simply translate the poem's narrative into another Blakean narrative and leave the interpretation up to the reader. The source study critics make a similar error when they fail to comment on how their source findings illuminate "The Mental Traveller's" meaning. The close reading analysts fall victim to inconsistency or feel pressed to impose an allegory or a philosophical system on the poem to explain its meaning. And no matter what method the critics use, they have difficulty accounting for all of the descriptive detail in the poem, short as it is. Two elements that finally evolve as suitable tests of a critic's argument are his thoroughness in establishing first the sympathy of a characterization and second the presence of irony. These two elements are the dominant sources of ambiguity in the poem, and if a critic does not account for all the descriptive detail in arguing sympathetic or unsympathetic characterization and in positing the presence or absence of irony, then that critic's commentary seems less credible than the commentary of one who does. The meaning of the poem itself turns on certain key issues:

Is the poem applicable to man as a race or to man as an individual being?

How does one relate the supernatural events in the poem to natural, human experience?

What is the identity of the narrator?

How should one define "Mental" in the title?

Which characters deserve a reader's sympathy and which do not?

Where and in what degree is irony present?

The soundest critiques are the ones that meet these issues squarely and discuss all the evidence pertaining to them. However, the most important conclusion deriving from this study reaches beyond "The Mental Traveller" and its critics. That is that the two dominant sources of ambiguity in "The Mental Traveller," the sympathy or lack of it in characterization and the presence or absence of irony, are also important sources of ambiguity in the rest of Blake and can be used as valuable tools in interpreting much of his poetry.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

Morris Emery Eaves

Second Committee Member

Mary Bess Whidden

Third Committee Member

Paul Benjamin Davis

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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