摘 要

据圣经记载，真正的宝藏不在人间而是在天上。弥尔顿和布莱克两位天国信使，毕生致力于描绘人间的美德和天上的世界，以鼓舞世人莫要着眼于现世蝇营狗苟，而应淡泊名利，追求永恒的幸福。本文旨在分析揭示弥尔顿的部分十四行诗，《失乐园》及布莱克《天真之歌》作品中所展现的天国宝藏，可分为五个部分：第一部分是关于弥尔顿和布莱克的文献回顾；第二部分介绍两人作为天国信使的资质；第三部分介绍两人作品中所揭示的人间的美德，主要表现为信仰上帝，在生活中劳逸结合和在逆境中坚忍不屈，对深陷苦难之人给予同情和友爱；第四部分介绍了两人的境界所能感知到的天堂，即失乐园中肃穆的天堂和天真之歌中温柔的天堂；最后一部分是总结。本文对两位作家所挖掘的天国宝藏的探索能给读者以精神慰藉。

关键词：弥尔顿；布莱克；美德；天堂

Abstract

According to the Bible, real treasure is not in the secular world but in heaven. Milton and Blake, two messengers of heaven who devoted themselves to extolling virtues of human and portraying heaven to inspire the later generations to pursue eternal happiness instead of short-sighted self-seeking intentions. The paper explores real treasure in virtuous mortal life which exists in Milton and Blake’s heaven by analysis of works ranging from Milton’s sonnets and epic Paradise Lost to Blake’s Songs of Innocence. It is divided into five parts. The first part is the literature review of Milton and Blake; the second part will explain the qualifications of the two being messengers of heaven; the third part focuses on the virtues of human which can be further expounded as faith in God, temperance in taking delights and fortitude in adversity as well as fraternity and compassion to others in distress; and the third part is to reveal the heaven within the two messengers’ perception, that is, Milton’s solemn heaven and Blake’s tender heaven; the last part is the conclusion. The exploration of Blake and Milton’s treasure in heaven offers contemporary readers in mental predicament certain spiritual healing power.

Key Words: Milton; Blake; virtues; heaven

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Two Messengers from Heaven 3

2.1 Milton: radical fighter for liberty 3

2.2 Blake: Milton's spirit and passionate herald of innocence 4

3 Virtues in Human 6

3.1 Faith in God 6

3.2 Temperance and fortitude in oneself 7

3.3 Fraternity and compassion to others 9

4 A Glimpse of Heaven 11

4.1 Milton's solemn heaven 11

4.2 Blake's tender heaven 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements......................................................................................................17

Treasure in Heaven: Milton and Blake

1 Introduction

Unremitting studies of Milton continue to emerge in foreign literary circles with updated perspectives and methods. For the research relevant to Milton’s heaven, Joad Raymond claims that there is a particular affinity between the images of Paradise Lost and the reality Milton offers to describe. Therefore, his study on the images of angels like Raphael, Michael and Abdiel in Paradise Lost represents Milton’s thinking about various matters. Besides, Angelica Duran associates Milton with disability studies in The Blind Bard, According to John Milton and His Contemporaries.

In China, researches on Milton started later than western countries, yet developed rapidly. Missionaries like KarlFriedrich August Gützlaff and Walter Henry Medhurst were responsible for the early general introduction of Milton and his masterpiece in China since 1837. Later in the New Culture Movement, Chinese scholars’ translations on Milton emerged in response to the promotion of foreign literature, like Fu Donghua’s lucid version in 1930 and Zhu Weiji’s faithful version in 1934. Studies on themes and characterization of Paradise Lost during the Republic of China mostly inherited the opinions of Romantic poets and critics like Blake, Shelly and William Hazlitt, speaking highly of Satan as a heroic rebel. Recently, a Comparative study An Idealist Poet and a Modern Essayist conducted by Xie Taifeng makes a contrast between Milton and Lu Xun for their appealing for spiritual struggles. Studies go further in content through dating back to Milton’s early poems and pamphlets and go wider in perspectives like Milton’s idea of virtue, woman and marriage. For example, Xu Guixia considers the most essential virtues of Milton are right reason, faith and self-mastery.

William Blake is a pious poet and engraver largely unrecognized during his lifetime, yet gains increasing acknowledgment over the passage of time. William Blake has been studied from the perspective of psychology, professor Will W. Adams managed to expound the correspondences between Blake and D. W. Winnicott in love, openness, and authenticity by analyzing Blake’s work and life in light of Winnicott’s theory of development and psychotherapy and vice versa. In China, Zhang Chiheng, from the perspective of a translator, indicated how little the extraordinary poet and saint was known by us,even the title A Poet Not Supposed to be Ignored should leave us a clue. He informed his readers of Blake’s anecdotes, his artistic and spiritual world as well as his connection with modernism. Songs of Innocence as one of his early writings is popular among readers and critics for presenting the purity of soul and simplicity of mind. Studies on Songs of Innocence from the perspective of theme, rhyme, images, and symbols prevail home and abroad among which the comparison work between Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is the main stream. However, studies on virtuous merits have been less discussed. This paper analyses human’s fraternity and compassion to other people by referring to the friendly love between human in Wang Jing’s A Thematic Study of Songs of Innocence in the perspective of Figure-Ground Theory.

Thus, this paper sets its goal to explore the literary answer to treasure in heaven, i.e. the virtues of human and the outlook of heaven based on the detailed text analysis of Milton’s sonnets and epic Paradise Lost and Blake’s Songs of Innocence.

2 Two Messengers from Heaven

Certain correspondences are shared between Milton and Blake: living in an age of social and political upheavals, possessing great poetry talent and radical political opinions, showing great compassion to people in distress in their works, etc. The following part focuses on their qualifications to be the messengers of heaven in light of their biographies.

2.1 Milton: Radical Fighter for Liberty