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  1. Home
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  3. Reading William Blake
  • Cited by 3
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2015
Print publication year:
2015
Online ISBN:
9781139032476
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139032476
Subjects:
Literature, Art, English Literature: General Interest, English Literature 1700-1830, Western Art
Series:
Reading Writers and their Work
Information

Book description

William Blake (1757‒1827) is one of the most original and influential figures of the Romantic Age, known for his work as an artist, poet and printmaker. Grounding his ideas both in close reading and in the latest scholarship, Saree Makdisi offers an exciting and imaginative approach to reading Blake. By exploring some of the most important themes in Blake's work and connecting them to particular plates from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Makdisi highlights Blake's creative power and the important interplay between images and words. There is a consistent emphasis on the relationship between the material nature of Blake's illuminated books, including the method he used to produce them, and the interpretive readings of the texts themselves. Makdisi argues that the material and formal openness of Blake's work can be seen as the very basis for learning to read in the spirit of Blake.

Reviews

‘Reading William Blake is not about careless readings but the most careful, brought to life by Makdisi’s own beautiful and precise critical prose.'

Shirley Dent Source: The Times Literary Supplement

'This is a brief introduction to Blake that novices and seasoned Blakeans alike will enjoy and learn from. … The book is a celebration of Blake rather than a critique. It always expresses the critic’s own admiration and communicates this warmly to the reader. … It draws readers in, showing how puzzles and disjunctions can be productive, and how the play of children, reflections on the passage of time, artistic labor, ideas of eternity, and industrial work practices can be closely related in Blake’s thought. It is a book that will succeed very well in starting readers on a journey.'

Andrew Lincoln Source: Blake - An Illustrated Quarterly

'One of the main strengths of Makdisi’s book - and a key reason as to why its approach is so clear and effective - is that the parameters of the project have been so carefully chosen. Makdisi anchors each of the chapters in a close reading of a poem from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, given that it is both accessible and widely available - and is also by far the most likely text with which any student of Blake will begin' … I will certainly be including Reading William Blake on my reading lists for students.'

Katherine Fender Source: The BARS Review

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Contents

Contents
References
Guide to further reading
Bentley, G. E. Jr., ed., Blake Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)
Bindman, David gen. ed., Blake's Illuminated Books, 6 volumes (Princeton University Press, 1991–95).
Butlin, Martin, Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1981).
Erdman, David, ed., The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (New York: Doubleday, 1988).
Essick, Robert and Paley, Morton, eds., Robert Blair's The Grave, Illustrated by William Blake: A Study and Facsimile (London: Scolar Press, 1982).
Essick, Robert, ed., The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue (Princeton University Press, 1983).
Essick, Robert, ed., William Blake's Commercial Book Illustrations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
Essick, Robert, ed., Songs of Innocence and of Experience (San Marino: Huntington Library, 2008).
Phillips, Michael, ed., The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2011).
Tayler, Irene, ed., Blake's Illustrations to the Poems of Gray (Princeton University Press, 1971)
Ackroyd, Peter, Blake (New York: Knopf, 1996).
Beer, John, William Blake: A Literary Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005).
Bentley, G. E. Jr., ed., Blake Records (Oxford University Press, 1969).
Bentley, G. E. Jr., The Stranger from Paradise (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2003).
Gilchrist, Alexander, The Life of William Blake (1863; reprt. London: Dent, 1982).
Bloom, Harold, Blake's Apocalypse (New York: Doubleday, 1963).
Bronowski, Jacob, Blake: A Man without a Mask (London: Secker and Warburg, 1943).
Erdman, David, Blake, Prophet against Empire (Princeton University Press, 1954).
Frye, Northrop, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965).
Gleckner, Robert, The Piper and the Bard (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1959).
Keynes, Geoffrey, Blake Studies: Essays on His Life and Work (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
Morton, A. L., The Everlasting Gospel: A Study in the Sources of William Blake (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1970).
Raine, Kathleen, Blake and Tradition (Princeton University Press, 1968).
Eaves, Morris, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
Eaves, Morris, William Blake's Theory of Art (Princeton University Press, 1982).
Essick, Robert, William Blake, Printmaker (Princeton University Press, 1980).
Phillips, Michael, The Creation of the Songs: From Manuscript to Illuminated Printing (Princeton University Press, 2000).
Viscomi, Joseph, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton University Press, 1993).
Crosby, Mark et al., eds., Re-Envisioning Blake (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012).
Eaves, Morris, ed., The Cambridge Companion to William Blake (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Goldsmith, Steven, Blake's Agitation: Criticism and the Emotions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
Hilton, Nelson, Literal Imagination: Blake's Vision of Words (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)
Mellor, Anne, Blake's Human Form Divine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
Mitchell, W. J. T., Blake's Composite Art (Princeton University Press, 1978).
Otto, Peter, Constructive Vision and Visionary Deconstruction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
Paley, Morton, Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the Development of Blake's Thought (Oxford University Press, 1970).
Williams, Nicholas, ed., Advances in Blake Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007)
Bruder, Helen, William Blake and the Daughters of Albion (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).
Bruder, Helen and Connolly, Tristanne, eds., Queer Blake (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010).
Clark, Steve and Worrall, David, eds., Historicizing Blake (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1994).
Clark, Steve and Worrall, David, eds., Blake, Nation and Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006).
Salvo, Jackie Di, War of Titans: Blake's Critique of Milton and the Politics of Religion (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983).
Salvo, Jackie Di et al., eds., Blake, Politics and History (New York: Garland, 1998).
Ferber, Michael, The Social Vision of William Blake (Princeton University Press, 1985).
Makdisi, Saree, William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Mee, Jon, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s (Oxford University Press, 1992).
Mee, Jon and Haggarty, Sarah, eds., Blake and Conflict (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009).
Thompson, E. P., Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (New York: New Press, 1995).
Williams, Nicholas, Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of William Blake (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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