Table Of ContentHISTORICIZING BLAKE
Also by Steve Clark
PAUL RICOEUR
Also by David Worrall
RESISTANCE AND SURVEILLANCE, 1790-1820
Historicizing Blake
Edited by
Steve Clark
University of Northampton
and
David Worrall
StMary's College of Higher Education
Twickenham
pal grave
macmillan
Text© The Macmillan Press Ltd 1994
Editorial matter and selection© Steve Clark and David Worrall1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994 978-0-333-56819-4
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First published in Great Britain 1994 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-23479-0 ISBN 978-1-349-23477-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23477-6
First published in the United States of America 1994 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
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New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-10393-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Historicizing Blake I edited by Steve Clark and David Worrall.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-10393-4
1. Blake, William, 1757-1827-Knowledge-History. 2. Blake,
William, 1757-1827-Criticism and interpretation. 3. Literature and
history-England-History-18th century. I. Clark, S. H. (Steven
H.), 1957- . 11. Worrall, David.
PR4148.H5H57 1994
821' .7-dc20 93--43706
CIP
Contents
List of Plates vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
Preface xi
Abbreviations and References xii
1 Introduction
Steve Clark and David Worrall 1
2 The Infidel as Prophet: William Reid and Blakean
Radicalism
lain McCalman 24
3 Is there an Antinomian in the House? William Blake and
the After-Life of a Heresy
JonMee 43
4 'Self-Imposition': Alchemy, and the Fate of the 'Bound'
in later Blake
Edward Larrissy 59
5 Blake and the 'Reasoning Historian'
Andrew Lincoln 73
6 'Among the flocks of Tharmas': The Four Zoas and the
Pastoral of Commerce
Philip Cox 86
7 Blake, Democritus and the 'Fluxions of the Atom': Some
Contexts for Materialist Critiques
Mary Lynn Johnson 105
8 Innovative Reproduction: Painters and Engravers at the
Royal Academy of Arts
D.W. Dorrbecker 125
v
vi Contents
9 The Sins of the Fathers: Patriarchal Criticism and
The Book of The!
Helen Bruder 147
10 Blake's Changing View of History: The Impact of the
Book of Enoch
John Beer 159
Blake Bibliography 179
Index 184
List of Plates
1. William Blake. A Watcher surrounded by four Daughters of Men.
Pencil drawing, inscribed 'Book of ENOCH' (National Gallery of
Art, Washington)
2. William Blake. A Watcher seducing one of the Daughters of Men.
Pencil drawing, inscribed 'from the book of Enoch' (National
Gallery of Art, Washington)
3. William Blake. Two phallic males decending to one of the Daugh
ters of Men. Pencil drawing, inscribed 'From the Book of Enoch'
(National Gallery of Art, Washington)
4. William Blake. A spectrous female rising above a recumbent
form; a figure looking on, apparently in horror. Pencil drawing,
inscribed 'B of Enoch' (National Gallery of Art, Washington)
5. William Blake. Two figures, perhaps before the throne of 'one
whose countenance was as snow, and whose garment as a shin
ing sun'. Pencil drawing, inscribed 'Book of Enoch' (National
Gallery of Art, Washington)
6. William Blake. A tethered figure trying to rise; great stars. Pencil
drawing, inscribed 'ENOCH' and 'Enoch'. (Fogg Art Museum,
Harvard University)
7. William Blake. The temptation of Eve. Pen and watercolour illus
tration to John Milton, Paradise Lost ix. 780-4 (Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston)
8. William Blake. Mirth and her Companions. Illustration to John
Milton, L'Allegro. Line engraving (British Museum)
vii
Notes on the Contributors
John Beer is the author of Blake's Humanism and Blake's Visionary
Universe; he has also published books on Wordsworth, Coleridge
and E.M. Forster, edited Coleridge's Aids to Reflection for the
Collected Coleridge and written articles on a variety of authors and
topics. His new book Romantic Influences is also published by
Macmillan.
Helen Bruder teaches English at Oxford Brookes University. She has
recently completed a PhD thesis entitled 'Historicizing Blake in "A
Land of Men and Women Too'" and has written reviews for several
academic journals, including Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly.
Steve Clark teaches at Osaka University and the University of
Northampton. He is the author of Paul Ricoeur (1990) and Sordid
Images: The Poetry of Masculine Desire {1994), has published on Blake
and eighteenth-century philosophy, and has edited a selection from
Akenside, Macpherson and Young.
Philip Cox is a Lecturer in the School of Cultural Studies at Sheffield
Hallam University. He is the author of articles on Blake and Emily
Bronte and is currently working on two book-length projects:
William Blake and the Politics of Pastoral and The Gendered Discourse of
Romantic Pastoral.
D. W. Dorrbecker teaches art history at the University of Trier, Ger
many. For many years he was bibliographer for Blake/An Illustrated
Quarterly, and he rediscovered five copies of Blake's illuminated
books in Cologne, Munich and Vienna. His most recent publication
on Blake's art is Konvention und Innovation {1992). He is currently co
editing Volume IV in the William Blake Trust series of reproductions
of 'Blake's Illuminated Books'.
Mary Lynn Johnson, formerly on the faculty of the University of
Illinois and Georgia State University, has been assistant to the presi
dent of the University of Iowa since 1983. She is co-author of Blake's
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
'Four Zoas': The Design of a Dream (1978), co-editor of the Norton
Critical Edition, Blake's Poetry and Designs (1979), compiler of the
Blake chapter in The English Romantic Poets: A Review of Research and
Criticism (1985), and author of several articles on Blake and on other
Romantic poets.
Edward Larrissy is Senior Lecturer in English, Warwick University.
He is the author of William Blake (1985), Reading Twentieth-Century
Poetry (1990), and Yeats The Poet: The Measures of Difference (forth
coming). He is currently preparing the Oxford Authors Yeats.
Andrew Lincoln teaches in the English Department of Queen Mary
and Westfield College, University of London. His edition of Blake's
Songs of Innocence and of Experience was published by the William
Blake Trust in conjunction with the Tate Gallery in 1991.
Jon Mee is a Lecturer in the English Department of the Australian
National University. His Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the
Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s was published in 1992.
lain McCalman is Associate Director of the Humanities Research
Centre, Australian National University. He has written Radical
Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London,
1795-1840 (1988) and is the editor of Horrors of Slavery: The Life and
Writings of Robert Wedderburn (1992).
David Worrall teaches English at St Mary's College, Strawberry
Hill. He is Associate Editor of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly and the
author of Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790-
1820 (1992). He is co-editing Volume IV of the William Blake Trust
facsimiles.
