Portrait of William Blake by Thomas Philips.
Public Domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons
"The Primeval State of Man was Wisdom, Art, and Science....
I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity. ...
I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Mans
I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create ..." (Jerusalem)
Blake's Poetry and Designs by
In addition to a broad selection of the poems, the volume includes over 100 images (16 in color), emphasizing the centrality of pictorial representations to Blake's verse. Biographical context is provided through dozens of excerpts from Blake's notebook, letters, marginalia, and other writings."Criticism" offers twenty wide-ranging commentaries by writers from Blake's contemporaries to present-day critics, among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Northrop Frye, Allen Ginsberg, Morris Eaves, Harold Bloom, Alicia Ostriker, John Mee, Saree Makdisi, and Julia Wright.A section on Textual Technicalities, a Chronology of Blake's life and work, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.
William Blake's Poetry by
Reader's Guides provide a comprehensive starting point for any advanced student, giving an overview of the context, criticism and influence of key works. Each guide also offers students fresh critical insights and provides a practical introduction to close reading and to analysing literary language and form. They provide up-to-date, authoritative but accessible guides to the most commonly studied classic texts. William Blake is a Romantic poet who remains popular today, in part because his exceptional insight into psychological, political and social issues remains powerfully relevant. The Reader's Guide begins by introducing Blake's major themes including religious, political and social issues and then moves on to reading key works, including Songs of Innocence and Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It offers an invaluable introduction to reading Blake's poetry and includes sections on its contexts, language and style, critical reception and adaptation and influence and finally an annotated guide to further reading.
