Romantic Circles Reviews

Reviewed by
G.A. Rosso
Southern Connecticut State University

On the final day of Christopher Rowland’s lectures on Blake and the Bible at Yale Divinity School in 2008, the renowned apocalypse scholar John J. Collins began the question-and-answer period by intoning, “Yes, well, but did Blake get Jesus right?” Rowland, the Dean Ireland Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at Oxford, replied “Yes and no.” Blake got the “non-conformist” Jesus right but he was not particularly interested in the “historical Jesus”. Although the book developed from these lectures shows that Blake sometimes does get the “Jesus of history” right, Rowland’s primary focus throughout is on “Jesus the archetypal antinomian.” In one of the book’s most profound and original insights, Rowland suggests that the figure of the antinomian Jesus provides a key underlying pattern of thought connecting early and late Blake. In the course of tracing this pattern, Rowland accomplishes his goal of raising Blake’s exegetical profile, arguing persuasively for his place at the center of modern hermeneutical history as “one of the foremost biblical interpreters” (xii).

A compelling aspect of Blake and the Bible is the professional expertise that Professor Rowland brings to the study of Blake. Previous scholars have engaged with Blake’s use of the Bible—Northrop Frye, Thomas Altizer, Leslie Tannenbaum to name the most significant—but Rowland brings both an acute literary sensitivity and a matchless scholarly erudition that derives from extensive experience in the field of biblical studies. He has written widely on apocalyptic literature, including the pioneering work The Open Heaven (1982), as well as The New Interpreter’s Bible (1998) and Blackwell Bible (2004) commentaries on Revelation which allude to Blake throughout. He has written extensively on the merkabah (throne-chariot) tradition that derives from Ezekiel’s inaugural vision of God, particularly as a source of mystical ideas in rabbinic and kabbalistic as well as Christian texts. He has been on the leading edge of contemporary biblical hermeneutics, writing on liberation theology and Blake’s relation to it. And he has written on Paul, specifically on the intersection of apocalyptic and mystical traditions in the letters. One of the book’s major contributions is Rowland’s argument concerning Paul’s central importance to Blake, a position that goes against the grain of Blake criticism but that is demonstrated with skill and deep learning.

Blake and the Bible makes several specific contributions to Blake studies that stem from the author’s familiarity with the New Testament and the history of biblical exegesis. Not least is his grasp of Blake’s unique Christian interpretation of Job, the subject of the first two chapters that serve as a methodological model for the book. Focusing on the engraved text of 1826, Rowland gives a plate-by-plate reading that provides “a heuristic lens to view Blake’s theology and interpretation of the Bible as a whole” (15). His main points—Blake’s critique of transcendence, his removal of the division between the divine and human, and his rejection of scriptural literalism—are not new, but they are grounded more securely in biblical texts and exegetical history than previous studies, particularly the sweeping excursions of Frye and Altizer and the standard texts by Wicksteed, Damon, and Lindberg. Of special value is Rowland’s exploration of “defective divinity” in the relation of God and Satan and his emphasis on Job and his wife’s visionary experiences. Blake’s keen focus on passages featuring dreams and visions anticipates modern critical insights into apocalyptic elements in Job. Rowland’s reading of plates 16-17 is superb in this regard. As Satan falls to judgment, he is not excluded from but integrated into the divine economy, enabling God to appear as Christ and bless Job, who rises to participate in the divine life again.

The Job material sets up the ensuing chapter on divine contraries, bringing clarification to the debate about Blake’s Gnosticism. With great economy and agility, Rowland lays out the biblical and Gnostic texts that present various exalted angels and divine figures who open up “exegetical possibilities” that Blake exploits in his critique of transcendence (84-5). In his view of contraries, Blake “uncannily anticipates” late twentieth-century discussions about “the theology of Second Temple Judaism” (278). Rowland helped open up the area of biblical scholarship that sees the exalted angel figure in biblical and rabbinic traditions as providing early Christians with a scheme for placing the resurrected Jesus alongside God without departing from monotheism. He explains how Blake utilizes biblical texts that present this figure, both to challenge monotheistic views of God and to emphasize the human form of divinity, placing the transcendent and immanent in dialectical tension.
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Reviewed by
Patricia Peek
Fordham University

This volume, a recent addition to the Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture series, should be of great interest to both Romantic and Victorian scholars. Spanning nearly one hundred years of literature about gardens and horticulture, Page and Smith discuss how women engaged in discussions of topics not limited by their domestic sphere. The motivating agenda for this work is an exploration of how in “a period marked by major political, technological, and cultural changes, the domesticated landscape was central to women’s complex negotiation of private and public life” (1). The act of gardening, botanical study and writing, and sketching the landscape both within and beyond the garden gate created opportunities for women in the nineteenth century to stretch beyond the boundaries set for them by society, in an attempt to participate in the larger socio-political arena. The essays found in the volume demonstrate how these acts “served as a ground for both social and intellectual experimentation” (11). Both Romantic and Victorian scholars will feel at home in the tangencies found in this genre and with the socio-political currents of each period, as Page and Smith see in their “domesticated landscape” the familiar (but always fresh) prospects of gender, female education, the tensions of class and labor, as well as the more abstract concept of sympathy.

Page and Smith divide their work into four major sections and an epilogue. Two essays linked by the topic heading comprise each section. In addition, complementing the text are over seventy illustrations carefully placed to guide the reader through the authors’ analyses. Rather like a finely crafted English garden, the structure of the book leads readers on different paths that clearly are part of a more complex, yet still defined textual and thematic structure. The authors are quite deliberate in adhering to this pattern, often reminding the reader how the essays relate to each other. One such example appears in Chapter 8, in a discussion of Oliphant’s Chronicles of Carlingford, where we are “reminded here of the walls that so often enclose and constrain the children in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century didactic stories, as discussed in Chapter I, and of the girls who yearned for the freedom outside the garden enclosure” (245). The authors clearly sense the tension created by employing such a wide range of examples in the genre, from perhaps lesser known children’s literature and studies on botany, to popular works by Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth. The guidance can feel intrusive, but the effort at cohesiveness ultimately props up the reader’s negotiation of the sometimes scattered dazzle of so many texts and their “interrelation” (7). Perhaps the most structurally and thematically useful construct is the “Conclusion” at the end of six of the eight essays which frames and encapsulates each topic.

This volume will be useful to a wide range of readers. Scholars of the genre will delight in the richness of the textual references and use of illustrations to ground the discussions. Page and Smith deftly weave critical threads from other scholars and pull those arguments further in interesting directions. An extensive list of works cited is worthy reading in itself for those interested in further exploration of the topics covered. They also make some interesting points that demonstrate that some of the literary theories put forth by prominent male authors in the canon could also be found in the specialized works of female authors in the period. In Maria Elizabeth Jacson’s 1797 Botanical Dialogues, Page and Smith point out that the character of Hortensia “teaches her children a skill akin to the concept of defamiliarization (in which poetry and art reveal common objects in new and startling ways): she models what can be learned through careful observation” (62). They link this “observation” to its more widely anthologized versions: “Jacson’s method also bears some comparison to Wordsworth’s idea just one year later in Lyrical Ballads that those who are attuned to the world find stories everywhere, as well as to Shelley’s argument in A Defence of Poetry (1821) that poetry removes ‘the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar’” (62). This comparison demonstrates the need for critical analyses such as that of Page and Smith to expose the depth of thought and insight in the works of these female authors. Examples such as this further the thesis that these women were pressing on the limits of the domestic sphere in an attempt to comment on the world beyond the “garden gate” (38). For readers less familiar with the genres of botanical writing and garden literature in the two periods, this text will open up surprising areas of exploration and perhaps create new points of connection with their own critical interests.
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