Daughter of Albion: A Novel of Ancient Britain

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Later, in the 14th century, a more elaborate tale was developed, claiming that Albina and her sisters founded Albion and procreated there a race of giants. [20] The "Albina story" survives in several forms, including the octosyllabic Anglo-Norman poem "Des grantz geanz" dating to 1300–1334. [21] [a] [22] [23] [b] [25] According to the poem, in the 3970th year of the creation of the world, [c] a king of Greece married his thirty daughters into royalty, but the haughty brides colluded to eliminate their husbands so they would be subservient to no one. The youngest would not be party to the crime and divulged the plot, so the other princesses were confined to an unsteerable rudderless ship and set adrift, and after three days reached an uninhabited land later to be known as "Britain". The eldest daughter Albina ( Albine) was the first to step ashore and lay claim to the land, naming it after herself. At first, the women gathered acorns and fruits, but once they learned to hunt and obtain meat, it aroused their lecherous desires. As no other humans inhabited the land, they mated with evil spirits called " incubi", and subsequently with the sons they begot, engendering a race of giants. These giants are evidenced by huge bones which are unearthed. Brutus arrived 260 years after Albina, 1136 before the birth of Christ, but by then there were only 24 giants left, due to inner strife. [25] As with Geoffrey of Monmouth's version, Brutus's band subsequently overtake the land, defeating Gogmagog in the process. [25] Manuscripts and forms [ edit ] Theotormon’s hypocrisy is his reliance on the material possession of Oothoon for his emotional wellbeing. His supposed idealism is revealed to be a made-up abstraction, his apparent religiosity an avoidance strategy. Oothoon exposed this doctrine of purity, revealing its contradictions in live Crucial to the overall message of Visions of the Daughters of Albion is the overarching metaphoric association of gender-based oppression with slavery. As discussed below, slavery was a hotly contested issue within the Romantic period, and appeared as a literary tool in a variety of works. In Visions, Blake associates slavery with the condition of contemporary British women, in announcing from the very beginning: “ENSLA’D, the Daughters of Albion weep” (Blake 218). From the outset of this work, the association of gender oppression with slavery is made. As the illustrations in Blake’s works are equally, if not sometimes more, important than the text presented, it is important to note that on the corresponding image, Plate 4 (see figure 1), “ENSLAV’D” is highly emphasized; besides “Visions,” it is the first thing you notice about this plate’s illustration, highlighting its importance to the narrative. Blake’s prophetic mode is diagnostic, rather than prognostic. His works claim company with the Biblical prophets: when Isaiah dines with the narrator in the Marriage, he explains that he

When the women were asleep at night they would visit them. They appeared as the handsome men in their dreams, but these were no men they were spirits of the darkness and allied to Satan. They came to them in the night and lay with them. Each one of the sisters had their own demon lover but they were only aware of them in their dreams and in their feelings. In this way the sisters spawned a race of male giants who were the demon seed of the incubi. The giants spread and dominated Albion for long ages before the arrival of Brutus and the Trojans. Gogmagog told Brutus he was now the last of this race of giants that were the children and descendants of Albina and her sisters. The Giants of Albion

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William Blake was a British poet, painter, and printmaker who lived from 1757 to 1827. He is known for his unique style of combining poetry and visual art, as well as his radical political and religious beliefs. Blake’s work often explored themes of spirituality, social injustice, and the human condition. He was largely unrecognized during his lifetime, but his influence on the Romantic movement and subsequent generations of artists and writers has been significant. Blake’s most famous works include “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,”“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” and “Jerusalem.” Context and Setting a b Dean, Ruth (1999), Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, pp.26–30 , cited by Fisher, Matthew (2004). Once Called Albion: The Composition and Transmission of History Writing in England, 1280–1350 (Thesis). Oxford University. p.25. Archived from the original on 2014-03-09. . Fisher: "five distinct versions of Des Grantz Geanz: the octosyllabic, alexandrine, prose, short verse, and short prose versions survive in 34 manuscripts, ranging in date from the first third of the fourteenth to the second half of the fifteenth century" Figure 3. Plate 1. Blake, William. Visions of the Daughters of Albion. 1793. Relief etching. British Museum, London.

Ekwall, Eilert (1930). "Early names of Britain". Antiquity. 4 (14): 149–156. doi: 10.1017/S0003598X00004464. S2CID 161954639. According to Blake, the story goes that fleas were inhabited by the souls of bloodthirsty men. These bloodthirsty men were confined to the bodies of small insects, because if they were the size of horses, they would drink so much blood that most of the country would be depopulated. The flea’s bloodthirsty nature can be seen in its tongue, darting from its mouth, and the cup (for blood-drinking) that it is carrying. Therefore when Jane Peterson wrote in 1973 that “ Visions of the Daughters of Albion has not yet been discussed as Blake’s portrayal of the problem of perception,” the observation was fair, yet her solution did not heal the divide (253). Instead, as in Mark Bracher’s “The Metaphysical Grounds of Oppression in Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion,” the epistemological sections are abstracted, made dominant, and used to insist upon autonomous individual responsibility for all outcomes, which are ultimately based on “the metaphysical decision which one makes” (Bracher 164). Vernon E. Lattin, for example, finds that “the condition of Oothoon’s enslavement is her mental attitude” (14). These approaches ignore how Oothoon deconstructs the structures that inculcate such metaphysics to begin with. Relating the centre of the poem to the ‘action’ will show that ‘Urizenic’ perception is not merely an unfortunate individual choice made in a vacuum of non-ideological freedom.

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Feminist Theory: [ ] Balsamo, Anne. "Reading Cyborgs, Writing Feminism: Reading the Body in Contemporary Culture." Technologies of the Gendered Body. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. 17-40. Print. Donaldson, Mike. "What is Hegemonic Masculinity?" Theory & Society 22 (1993): 643-657. Print. Kimmel, Michael S., and Abby L. Ferber. Privilege: A Reader. 3rd ed. Boulder: Westview Press, 2014. Print. Valenti, Jessica. The Purity Myth. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2010. Print. Overall, ‘Visions of the Daughters of Albion’ is a powerful exploration of the theme of oppression. Through his vivid imagery and powerful language, Blake forces us to confront the ways in which patriarchal structures can be both cruel and insidious, and to consider the ways in which we can work to dismantle them. The Theme of Innocence and Experience Visions of the Daughters of Albion is a 1793 poem by William Blake, produced as a book with his own illustrations. It is a short and early example of his prophetic books, and a sequel of sorts to The Book of Thel. They used their flint knives to dress and slice meat and cut the skin from their victims using the hides to make clothes and other items. From the flints they learnt how to make fire and cook their meat and they drank from the clear bubbling springs of Albion. They grew strong and they could feel vitality running again through their veins and they began to experience a longing for male companions, but there were none, but they were being watched. The Incubi of Albion Michel, Francisque, ed. (1862), "Appendix I: De Primis Inhabitatoribus Angliæ", Gesta Regum Britanniæ: a metrical history of the Britions of the XIIIth century, Printed by G. Gounouilhou, pp.199–214

Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn (2011), Leyser, Conrad; Smith, Lesley (eds.), "Mother or Stepmother to History? Joan de Mohun and Her Chronicle", Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400–1400, Ashgate Publishing, p.306, ISBN 978-1409431459 The critical relationship with the dissection of modes of perception in the sections of the poem has shifted over time. Older studies in the footsteps of Northrop Frye or Harold Bloom are more likely to engage with the apparently metaphysical bent of Oothoon, Bromion, and Theotormon, yet their common focus on transcendent ‘free love’ often depends on the very dualisms that, as I hope to demonstrate, the central sections criticize, meaning they were misinterpreted or isolated from the rest of the poem. Blake used Plato's Allegory of the Cave in Visions of the Daughters of Albion as a theme for the three characters not being able to understand the true nature of reality, without being hindered by convention. It has been argued that Theotormon is a mythicised version of John Stedman, whose book about his experience of slavery and brutality in Suriname on the coast of South America was being illustrated by Blake at the time. [1] Trivia [ edit ] Murder prevailed and the island of Britain ran red with giant’s blood and still they fought among themselves until only twenty-four giants remained. Gogmagog then told Brutus that with his arrival with his Trojans followers they could not match the weapons used against them and had no answer to their numbers. He reflected that with all of his kind dead he had been captured and given the choice of being killed there and then, or face Corineus in single combat to the death and he chose the latter.In 2010, artist Mark Sheeky donated the 2008 painting "Two Roman Legionaries Discovering The God-King Albion Turned Into Stone" to the Grosvenor Museum collection. [35] See also [ edit ]