{"id":204,"date":"2023-02-17T21:02:36","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T21:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=204"},"modified":"2023-02-17T21:02:36","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T21:02:36","slug":"christian-divinety-and-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/02\/17\/christian-divinety-and-slavery\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Divinety and Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although most literature from the Romantic period did not engage with or challenge popular religious ideology, writers still used religious references and comparisons to enhance their ideas about humankind and sublime experiences. Both William Blake, in \u201cThe Divine Image\u201d from <\/span>Songs of Innocence, <\/span><\/i>and Ann Yearsley, in \u201cDeath of Luco\u201d, reference Christianity, however Blake emphasizes religious divinity in the ordinary world while Yearsley criticizes religious hypocrisy. Using a religious lens to examine these two poems highlight the distinction between what Christianity <\/span>should<\/span><\/i> represent, and what it <\/span>actually<\/span><\/i> represents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Divine Image\u201d, Blake conceptualizes four main tenets of Christianity- mercy, pity, peace, and love- as parts of a divine being as well as parts of a human being. He writes that these virtues are both \u201cGod our father dear\u201d and \u201cman, his child and care\u201d (l. 6-8). Mercy, pity, peace, and love inherently have divine connotations in the Church, as it is believed that only God can perfectly uphold these virtues, but Blake explicitly personifies these virtues to show their presence across humanity. Blake writes that \u201cMercy has a human heart\u201d, \u201cPity, a human face\u201d, \u201cLove, the human form\u201d, and \u201cPeace, the human dress\u201d; he intentionally capitalizes each virtuous word to emphasize its importance and transcendental nature (l. 13-16). By describing the presence of these otherwise divinely religious concepts in average human forms, Blake challenges the strict separation between God\u2019s perfection and humanity\u2019s imperfection. This optimistic perspective suggests that the religious ideals of mercy, pity, peace, and love, while divine in concept, are ordinary in appearance and can be found within \u201cevery man of every clime\u201d (l. 13). Rather than reserving Christianity for only the most pious individuals, Blake supports the notion that anyone and everyone can participate in the Christian faith.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a part of the collection <\/span>Songs of Innocence, <\/span><\/i>the inclusive Christianity depicted in \u201cThe Divine Image\u201d represents an idealistic, and even naive, understanding of Christianity rather than the reality. Yearsley, however, presents a less idealistic depiction of Christianity in \u201cDeath of Luco\u201d. This poem tells the story of Luco, an enslaved man, and the violent and hateful actions directed toward him by his Christian slave owners. Yearsley explicitly refers to Luco\u2019s master as the \u201cremorseless Christian\u201d and the \u201crude Christian\u201d, and she later extends her criticism to all of slave owners that \u201cdare avow to God\u201d (l. 253, 259, 285). Her criticism of slave-owning Christians speaks to the hypocrisy of those who believe in a kind, forgiving God while simultaneously owning, torturing, raping, and killing enslaved human beings. Unlike Blake\u2019s depiction of Christianity, Yearsley uses the sociopolitical issue of slavery to contextualize the contradictory reality of Christianity. Therefore, Blake presents the perfect image of Christianity, based upon God\u2019s divinity and the principles of mercy, pity, peace, and love, and Yearsley describes the same Christianity, only after it has been appropriated by humankind. Where Blake shows humanity\u2019s potential for divine goodness, then, Yearsley shows humanity\u2019s actual dismissal of divine goodness.<\/span><\/p>\n



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Although most literature from the Romantic period did not engage with or challenge popular religious ideology, writers still used religious references and comparisons to enhance their ideas about humankind and sublime experiences. Both William Blake, in \u201cThe Divine Image\u201d from Songs of Innocence, and Ann Yearsley, in \u201cDeath of Luco\u201d, reference Christianity, however Blake emphasizes … Continue reading Christian Divinety and Slavery<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4793,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4793"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}