Blake: The Complexity of Allusions

Abstract

IN Jerusalem 52 William Blake composed ‘I saw a Monk of Charlemaine’ (E 201–2),1 a poem rejecting ‘Glorious war’, for Charlemagne—Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire—was renowned for his military conquests. Blake, in modulating his projected text (E 811), denounced ‘Charlemaine & his Clouds of War’ that ‘Muster around the Polar Star’ (E 811), where ‘Charlemaine & his Barons bold / Stood by & mockd in iron & gold’ (E 811).2 Accordingly, Blake identifies warlike ‘Charlemaine’ with circumpolar Boötes (which means plowman), a constellation revolving through the heavens that Blake in turn associates with patronymic Albion3 and with King Arthur (who will rise from his ‘sleep’ and ‘return again’ [DC, E 542] as rex quondam rexque futurus [that once and future king]). Blake’s foregoing phrasing borrows from Edmund Spenser’s The Tears of the Muses (l.462),4 where ‘Charlemaine’ is found ‘amongst the starris seaven’, the seven Polar stars of Charles’ Wain, the stellar Plow of Boötes. Charles’ Wain by tradition was envisioned as seven oxen plowing in the furrows of the night heavens,5 and the star Arcturus in the constellation Boötes, associated with Arturus or King Arthur by legend,6 was additionally linked with Carl or Charlemagne (‘Charlemagne or Charles his wane’).7 Book One of Spenser’s The Faerie Queen (2.1) mentions Boötes, ‘the northerne wagoner’ and his ‘sevenfold teme [team] behind the stedfast [Polar] starre’. In consequence, Blake’s starry Plow of Boötes, circulating around the Polaris, becomes King Charles’ Wain (in variation seen as the Big Dipper). In Book Two of The Faerie Queene (10.4) Spenser also speaks of ‘mighty kings and conquerours in warre’ (the ancestors of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen), and these bellicose English lords in Spenser’s view performed warlike ‘noble deeds above the northern [Polar] starre,’ thereby achieving ‘Immortal Fame.’8