Setting William Blake's language concepts and practices within the broad context of linguistic history, this book offers a new perspective on his poetry. Essick first looks in detail at four of Blake's paintings and addresses some basic questions in semiotic theory based on the history of the "motivated sign" idea from Plato to Wilhelm von Humboldt. Converting this background into a hermeneutic, he then demonstrates Blake's contributions to the mystical tradition and his critique of 18th-century linguistic doctrines, presenting a parodic deconstruction of rationalist sign theory in The Book of Urizen. Finally, Essick looks at Blake's compositional practices, his development of these into a transactional view of language, and the apocalyptic reordering of the relationship between meaning and being in Jerusalem.

Against a historical backdrop that includes eighteenth-century language theory, children's literature and education, debates on the French Revolution, Biblical interpretation, and print culture, Blake on Language, Power, and Self-Annihilation breaks new ground in the study of William Blake. This book analyzes the concept of self-annihilation in Blake s work, using the language theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to elucidate the ways in which his discourse was open to the viewpoints of others, undermines institutional authority, and restores dialogue. This book not only uncovers the importance of self-annihilation to Blake's thinking about language and communication, but it also develops its centrality to Blake's poetic practice.

A richly illustrated, comprehensive introduction to the visionary artist William Blake. William Blake (1757–1827) is a universal artist—an inspiration to musicians, poets, performers, and visual artists worldwide. By combining his poetry and images on the page through radical printing techniques, Blake created some of the most striking and enduring images in art. His personal struggles in a period of political terror and oppression; creativity, inventiveness, and technical innovation; and vision and political commitment keep his work relevant today. Featuring over 130 color images, this accessible yet comprehensive introduction to Blake’s achievements and ambition includes discussions of his legacy in America; relationship to the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque artists who preceded him; visionary imagination; and unparalleled skill as a printmaker.

Explores how the Romantic period gave birth to a seductive cognitive cultural program that retains far reaching implications for contemporary views on individuality and relationships between the individual and larger groups of identification. Established

It is not surprising that visitors to Blake’s cosmology – the most elaborate in the history of British text and design – often demand a map in the form of a reference book. The entries in this volume benefit from the wide range of historical information made available in recent decades regarding the relationship between Blake’s text and design and his biographical, political, social, and religious contexts. Of particular importance, the entries take account of the re-interpretations of Blake with respect to race, gender, and empire in scholarship influenced by the groundbreaking theories that have arisen since the first half of the twentieth century. The intricate fluidity of Blake’s anti-Newtonian universe eludes the fixity of definitions and schema. Central to this guide to Blake's work and ideas is Kathryn S. Freeman's acknowledgment of the paradox of providing orientation in Blake’s universe without disrupting its inherent disorientation of the traditions whereby readers still come to it. In this innovative work, Freeman aligns herself with Blake’s demand that we play an active role in challenging our own readerly habits of passivity as we experience his created and corporeal worlds.

William Blake and the Myths of Britain is the first full-length study of Blake's use of British mythology and history. From Atlantis to the Deists of the Napoleonic Wars, this book addresses why the eighteenth century saw a revival of interest in the legends of the British Isles and how Blake applied these in his extraordinary prophetic histories of the giant Albion, revitalising myths of the Druids and Joseph of Arimathea bringing Christ to Albion.

William Blake's illuminated poems challenge their readers to participate fully in a highly interactive process of reading. The complex interaction of their verbal and visual texts forces the involved reader to assume greater responsibility than usual for formulating meaning. This book examines some of the ways in which Blake's illuminated poems subvert the customary authority of texts and force readers to reassess both their expectations about reading and their customary responses to words and visual images alike.