TOWARD A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE SUBJECT: A READING OF ROUSSEAU'S CONFESSIONS AND BLAKE'S VISIONARY EPIC

This study contends that a reassessment of the idea of the human subject is necessary if contemporary literary theory and interpretive practice are to take into account developments in Continental thought such as semiotics which have supplanted the traditional notion of the individual as an autonomous subject with a consideration of those material forces such as language and culture which inform our understanding of human subjective existence. The study attempts to establish the historical foundation of a model of the subject which will be of value to contemporary theory in assimilating this challenge to the idea of the autonomous individual.;The essay is based on two key notions elaborated by Michel Foucault in Les Mots et les choses. First he contends that at the end of the eighteenth century Western thought began to consider the individual as a subject, a place where those forces which shape the understanding manifest their power. Secondly he proposes that literary texts also exhibit the influence of these forces. So this study argues that a reading of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century texts will yield a record of the notion of the human being as a subject which Foucault maintains was then emerging and which in his view still influences Western thought.;The first chapter treats the need for a new theory of the subject, Foucault's ideas on cultural history and their relation to the subject, and then proposes a method for reading the works of Rousseau and Blake in order to determine the model of the subject which they use. In each instance the reading will first establish the dominant organizing strategy at work in the text and then consider the notion of the subject which results from the choice and use of this strategy.;The second chapter identifies as Rousseau's principal textual strategy the creation of fictions, inaccessible states against which he defines and understands human existence. It examines the nature state of the Second Discourse and Julie's idea of her life after death in Julie as examples of fictions by which Rousseau resolves the struggle of passion and will which for him divides human experience. Chapter III then undertakes a reading of selected incidents from the later books of the Confessions and passages from the Reveries. This reading contends that Rousseau in his autobiographical writings establishes a fiction of society as a force which imposes social roles against the will of the individual and then defines himself as a subject by attempting to demonstrate that he does not conform to his fictional model of how society functions.;The fourth chapter outlines Blake's evocation of apocalypse or the transformation of the world as the strategy which organizes his poetry. It reads "The Tiger," The First Book of Urizen, and Vala in order to show the way in which Blake conceives of apocalypse as the reversal of the misperceptions which prevent the human imagination from viewing the imperfections of the world as the source of its regeneration. Chapter V looks at Milton and Jerusalem as Blake's description of the process by which a subject acquires visionary perception, transforms the world, and as a result injects itself into a new form of social life which makes each individual an element within a regenerate, corporate form of society.;Chapter VI maintains that despite their very different organizing strategies these two groups of texts reveal a notion of the subject as a split entity forced to confront within itself the influence of those outside powers (society for Rousseau, regenerate humanity for Blake) which define the conditions of its existence. The chapter concludes by arguing that this model must serve as the basis of any notion of the subject invoked by contemporary literary theory and practice.