Queer Blake

276 Pages·2010·3.622 MB·English

by  Helen P. Bruder, Tristanne Connolly (eds.)

Queer Blake
AlsobyHelenP.Bruder
WILLIAMBLAKEANDTHEDAUGHTERSOFALBION
WOMENREADINGWILLIAMBLAKE(editor)
AlsobyTristanneConnolly
WILLIAMBLAKEANDTHEBODY
LIBERATINGMEDICINE1720–1835(co-editedwithSteveClark)
Queer Blake
Editedby
Helen P. Bruder
and
Tristanne Connolly
©HelenP.Bruder&TristanneConnolly2010.Chapters©theirindividual
authors2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-21836-9
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Firstpublished2010by
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ISBN 978-1-349-30433-2 ISBN 978-0-230-27717-5 (eBook)
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QueerBlake/editedbyHelenP.Bruder,TristanneConnolly.
p. cm.
Summary:“Overthelastdecade,Romanticismandqueertheoryhave
beenmutuallyilluminatingandincrediblyproductive,butthiscanonical
‘queering’hassomehowveeredawayfromWilliamBlake.Thiscollection
looksanewatBlake’scelebratedsexualvisions,toseehowtheymight
appearoncecompulsoryheterosexhasbeenditchedasaninterpretative
norm”—Providedbypublisher.
ISBN 978-1-349-30433-2 (hardback)
1. Blake,William,1757–1827—Criticismandinterpretation. 2. Blake,
William,1757–1827—Knowledge—Psychology. 3. Homosexuality
andliterature—England—History—19thcentury. 4. Homosexuality
andliterature—England—History—18thcentury. I. Bruder,
HelenP. II. Connolly,TristanneJ.,1970–
PR4148.H63Q442010
821(cid:2).7—dc22 2010002679
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
Contents
ListofIllustrations vii
NotesonContributors viii
ListofAbbreviations xi
Introduction:‘Whatisnowprovedwasonce,onlyimagin’d’ 1
HelenP.BruderandTristanneConnolly
Pansexuality(regained) 21
HelenKidd
1 BlakeandtheEvolutionofSame-SexSubjectivity 23
ChristopherZ.Hobson
2 BlakeandtheQueeringofJouissance 40
RichardC.Sha
3 DrawingLines:Bodies,SexualitiesandPerformance
inTheFourZoas 50
PeterOtto
4 AnalBlake:BringinguptheRearinBlakeanCriticism 63
ElizabethC.Effinger
5 TheBodyoftheBlasphemer 74
MartinMyrone
6 Trannies,AmputeesandDiscoQueens:Blake
andContemporaryQueerArt 87
JasonWhittaker
7 ‘RealActing’:‘FelphamBilly’andGraysonPerryTryItOn 97
HelenP.Bruder
8 ‘Fearnot/Tounfoldyourdarkvisionsoftorment’:Blake
andEmin’sBadSexAesthetic 116
TristanneConnolly
9 ‘Woes&...sighs’:FantasiesofSlaveryinVisions
oftheDaughtersofAlbion 140
BethanStevens
v
vi Contents
10 ‘Thelineamentsof...desire’:Blake’sVisionsoftheDaughters
ofAlbionandRomanticLiteraryTreatmentsofRape 153
CarolineJackson-Houlston
11 ‘YetIamanidentity/Iwish&feel&weep&groan’:Blake’s
Sentimentalismas(Peri)Performative 163
SteveClark
12 ‘ByaFalseWifeBroughttotheGatesofDeath’:Blake,Politics
andTransgenderedPerformances 186
DavidFallon
13 ‘NoBoysWork’:Blake,HayleyandtheTriumphs
of(Intellectual)Paiderastia 199
MarkCrosby
14 ‘HayleyonhisToilette’:Blake,HayleyandHomophobia 209
SusanMatthews
15 ‘MylittleCaneSofaandtheBustofSappho’:Elizabeth
IremongerandtheFemaleWorldofBook-Collecting 221
KeriDavies
WorksCited 236
Index 256
List of Illustrations
Cover illustration: William Blake, Wat Tyler and the Tax Gatherer. Charles
Allen,AnewandimprovedhistoryofEngland.London:JosephJohnson,1798.
G.E.BentleyCollection,VictoriaUniversityLibrary(Toronto)
3.1 WilliamBlake,TheFourZoas,NightIII,page40(cid:3)c British
LibraryBoard.AllRightsReserved(Add.39764folio20v) 57
3.2 WilliamBlake,TheFourZoas,NightVIII,page112[108].
(cid:3)c BritishLibraryBoard.AllRightsReserved(Add.39764
folio54v) 60
5.1 WilliamBlake,TheBlasphemer(circa1800),penandinkand
watercolouronpaper,384×340mm(cid:3)c Tate:Bequeathedby
MissAliceG.E.Carthew1940(cid:3)c Tate,2009 78
5.2 JohannHeinrichFüssli(HenryFuseli,1741–1825),Damevor
Laokoon,1801/1805,pen,32×40.4cm.KunsthausZürich(cid:3)c
2008KunsthausZürich.Allrightsreserved 83
6.1 Joel-PeterWitkin,‘WomanOnceaBird’,SongsofInnocence
andExperience,2004 90
6.2 Joel-PeterWitkin,‘TheTyger’,SongsofInnocenceand
Experience,2004 95
11.1 WilliamBlake,AlexanderPope(cid:3)c ManchesterCityGalleries 166
14.1 JohannHenrichFüssli(HenryFuseli,1741–1826),The
IncubusLeavingTwoSleepingWomen,1810,penciland
watercolour,31.5×40.8cm(cid:3)c 2009KunsthausZürich.All
rightsreserved 216
vii
Notes on Contributors
Helen P. Bruder, amateur, wrote William Blake and the Daughters of Albion
(1997), ‘Blake and Gender Studies’ in Palgrave Advances in William Blake
Studies(ed.NicholasM.Williams,2006)andeditedWomenReadingWilliam
Blake(2007).
SteveClarkiscurrentlyVisitingProfessorattheGraduateSchoolofHuman-
ities and Sociology, University of Tokyo. He is the author of Sordid Images:
the Poetry of Masculine Desire (1994) and has published a number of articles
oneighteenth-centuryphilosophyandthepoetryofsensibility.Hehasalso
publishedwidelyonnewhistoricismandtheoriesofhistoriography,witha
focus on the work of Paul Ricoeur. Co-editor of several collected volumes,
including five on William Blake, his most recent are Asian Crossings: Travel
WritingonChina,JapanandSouthEastAsia(withPaulSmethurst,2008)and
LiberatingMedicine1720–1835(withTristanneConnolly,2009).
Tristanne Connolly is Associate Professor in the English Department at
St Jerome’s University in the University of Waterloo. She is the author of
William Blake and the Body (Palgrave, 2002) and articles on various aspects
ofBlake.Sheisco-editor,withSteveClark,ofLiberatingMedicine1720–1835
(2009),andeditorofSpectacularDeath:InterdisciplinaryPerspectivesonMortal-
ityand(Un)Representability(Intellect,forthcoming2010).Asaco-investigator
on a five-year interdisciplinary project, ‘City Life and Well-Being: the Grey
Zone of Health and Illness’, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health
Research(CIHR),sheiscurrentlyresearchingrepresentationsofreproduction
inthelongeighteenthcentury.
Mark Crosby is currently the Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen’s
University, Belfast. He has just completed a book that examines Blake’s
responses to patronage, entitled Immortal Friendship: William Blake and the
Politics of Patronage and has published a number of articles on Blake in
Blake/AnIllustratedQuarterly,theBritishArtJournalandtheHuntingtonLibrary
Quarterly. He is also the bibliographer for the Blake Archive. His next
projectwillattempttorecuperateWilliamHayleyintheeyesoftheliterary
community.
Keri Davies is Vice-President of the Blake Society. An independent scholar,
he has written on William Blake’s parents (particularly in relation to his
mother’s links with the Moravian Church), and on the social and intellec-
tualmilieuofearlyBlakecollectors,andotherfriendsandacquaintancesof
thepainter-poet.
viii
NotesonContributors ix
Elizabeth C. EffingerisadoctoralcandidateintheDepartmentofEnglish
at the University of Western Ontario, specializing in transgressive bodies
and technologies within contemporary theory and Romanticism. She has
an article on cyber-suicide appearing in the collection Spectacular Death:
InterdisciplinaryPerspectivesonMortalityand(Un)Representability(ed.Tristanne
Connolly,Intellect,forthcoming2010).
DavidFallonisaBritishAcademyPostdoctoralResearchFellowatStAnne’s
College,Oxford,workingoneighteenth-centuryandRomantic-periodliter-
ature. He completed his doctoral thesis, ‘William Blake and the Politics of
Apotheosis’,attheUniversityofOxfordandiscurrentlyworkingonabook
on Blake, politics, and Enlightenment accounts of myth and religion. His
articleshaveappearedinEighteenth-CenturyLifeandLiteratureCompass,and
hecontributedanessaytothecollectionBlakeandConflict.
Christopher Z. Hobson, Associate Professor of English at State University
of New York, College at Old Westbury, is author of The Chained Boy: Orc
and Blake’s Idea of Revolution (1999) and Blake and Homosexuality (2000)
and co-editor of Blake, Politics, and History (1998, with Jackie DiSalvo and
G.A. Rosso). He is currently at work on a two-volume study of prophetic
traditionsinAfricanAmericanreligionandliterature.
Caroline Jackson-Houlston is a Senior Lecturer and Field Chair of English
at Oxford Brookes University, working in the Romantic and Victorian peri-
ods. Her monograph on allusion to folk song in nineteenth-century prose
fiction, Ballads, Songs and Snatches, came out in 1999 and she is currently
working on a book-length study of gender in the work of Walter Scott and
hiscontemporaries.
Helen Kidd teaches on the English Studies, Creative Writing and Criti-
cal Practice degree course at Ruskin College, Oxford. Her last collection of
poetry,BlueWeather (2005),wontheCorkPoetryManuscriptCompetition,
and she has been an editor, reviewer and academic working on poetry for
many years. She has worked with artists and musicians on a number of
projects in prisons, hospitals and schools, and co-founded the Cross Arts
installationgroupFoldingAirin1998.
Susan MatthewsisaSeniorLecturerinEnglishatRoehamptonUniversity.
ShepublishedonBlakeandonthewomen’snovelintheearly1990s.Recent
essayshaveappearedinBlake,NationandEmpire(ed.SteveClarkandDavid
Worrall, Palgrave 2006) and Blake, Modernity and Popular Culture (ed. Steve
Clark and Jason Whittaker, Palgrave 2007). A monograph, Blake, Sexuality
andBourgeoisPoliteness,isforthcomingin2010.
MartinMyroneisaCuratoratTateBritain,London.Hehaswrittenwidely
on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and culture, with an emphasis
onquestionsofgender,identityandculturalvalue.Hispublicationsinclude