Today's Topics:
RE: they're here!
Re: The Blake Archive
HISTORICIZING BLAKE: BOOK REVIEW
Blake, Epic, and Allegory
Re: Blake, Epic, and Allegory
Blake and Epic
Re: Blake and Epic
Re: Blake, Epic, and Allegor
Re: The Blake Archive
Hello / Particular Blakean Interests
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 1995 05:35:36 -0500 (CDT)
From: RPYODER@ualr.edu
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RE: they're here!
Message-Id: <950807053536.4022672c@ualr.edu>
ISBN #'s for Vols. 4 and 6 of Blake Trust/Princeton Blake:
Vol. 4 isbn 0-691-03674-8 titled "The Contintental Prophecies" (includes
America, Europe, The Song of Los)
Vol. 6 isbn 0-691-04416-3 titled "The Urizen Books" (includes Urizen,
Ahania, The Book of Los)
paul yoder
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 1995 16:01:50 -0500 (EST)
From: meav@db1.cc.rochester.edu (Morris Eaves)
To: in@"blake@albion.com"
Subject: Re: The Blake Archive
Message-Id: <01HTSPV6Z56Q9VV2GY@DBV>
For the information of blake@albion.com subscribers:
>
>THE BLAKE ARCHIVE
>A hypermedia archive supported by the Getty Grant Fund and the Institute
>for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia
>
> Morris Eaves, University of Rochester
> Robert Essick, University of California-Riverside
> Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
>
>
>
> *a full description of the Blake Archive can be found using the
> World Wide Web at:
> http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/blake/blake.wip-1.html
>
>
>
>Introduction
>
>Beginning July 1, 1995, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the
>Humanities at the University of Virginia and the Getty Grant Program are
>sponsoring the production of an electronic archive based on the
>illuminated books of William Blake, heavily supplemented by his paintings,
>drawings, and commercial illustrations. The archive will be a powerful
>reference tool, offering high-quality reproductions of an important body
>of work not currently available, and making that work accessible and
>useable in new ways that can deepen interdisciplinary understanding in
>this area.
>
>The project, directed by Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph
>Viscomi, involves transferring to digital form much of the visual and
>verbal work of William Blake. Central to the project will be scanned
>images of approximately 55 key copies of Blake's 19 illuminated books,
>about half of which have never been reproduced before. Altogether, the
>archive will contain about 3000 images, about 2/3 from the illuminated
>books, the remaining 1/3 from Blake's paintings, drawings, and
>engravings. Once archived digitally, tagged (indexed for retrieval by a
standard marking system that will be adapted for the purpose), and
annotated, the images can be examined like ordinary color reproductions, but
they can also be enlarged, computer enhanced, juxtaposed in numerous
combinations, and otherwise manipulated to investigate features (such as the
etched basis of the designs and texts) that have heretofore been
imperceptible without close first-hand scrutiny of the original works, which
are housed in international collections at widely separated locations.
>
>By incorporating much of Blake's pictorial canon--with images thoroughly
>indexed by subjects, dates, and themes, and organized as only hypermedia
>systems will allow--the Blake archive will for the first time give
>scholars and students access to the major intersections between the
>illuminated books and Blake's other creative and commercial works. By
>providing the historical, technical, and aesthetic contexts necessary to
>study Blake as printmaker, artist, and poet, the archive will encourage a
>deeper, more responsible understanding of his aims and methods, which have
>been regularly misunderstood and misrepresented.
>
>The concrete results will be (1) an archival edition of the illuminated
>books on CD-ROM (compact disc) and (2) a large, searchable hypermedia
>archive that can be accessed through the internet. Both products will be
>designed for use by a broad audience of scholars and students in studies,
>classrooms, and museums.
>
>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 11:49:50 -0700
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: HISTORICIZING BLAKE: BOOK REVIEW
Message-Id: <199508081849.LAA03370@igc2.igc.apc.org>
Book review by Ralph Dumain
HISTORICIZING BLAKE, edited by Steve Clark and David Worrall. New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. ($45, hardcover)
In Chapter 1, an introduction by the editors, some interesting
claims are made. Historical contextualization of Blake has been
neglected in the wake of its most influential proponents, E.P.
Thompson (THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS, 1963) and David
Erdman (PROPHET AGAINST EMPIRE, 1954). The postmodernist
obsession with textuality has not resulted in any substantive
concern with real history. A controversy over the editorial
decisions embodied in the 1982 Erdman edition of Blake's works is
cited in this regard. Various treatments of Blake's political
radicalism and/or disengagement are criticized. Thompson in his
moralistic zeal over-romanticizes the working class. There is a
comparison between Blake and Kant (p. 16) I do not understand.
I shall gloss over some of the following chapters, not because
they are less worthy than the others, but because I have nothing
much to say about them and wish to concentrate my attention on
those essays which especially interested me. (I was not about to
pay $45 for this thin book, so I read it in the store.) "Is there
an antinomian in the house? William Blake and the after-life of a
heresy" by Jon Mee (Chapter 3) concerns the persistence of
antinomianism in Britain. I noted in "'Self-imposition', alchemy,
and the fate of the 'bound' in later Blake" by Edward Larrissy
(Chapter 4) Blake's concern to show how the infinite resides
within boundedness. I have no notes on Philip Cox's "'Among the
flocks of Tharmas': THE FOUR ZOAS and the pastoral of commerce"
(Chapter 6). "Innovative reproduction: painters and engravers at
the Royal Academy of Arts" by D.W. Dorrenbecker (Chapter 8) will
naturally concern anyone who wants to understand the artistic
ideas and practices of Blake's time and place. One should also
not overlook the bibliography at the back of the book.
The Reid discussed in "The infidel as prophet: William Reid and
Blake's radicalism" by Iain McCalman [?-my handwriting is
terrible] was a contemporary of Blake. Given my interest on the
impact of German idealism on the British, I note that Reid admired
Johan Fichte (p. 33).
I was interested in "Blake and the 'reasoning historian'" by
Andrew Lincoln (Chapter 5) and "Blake's changing view of history:
the impact of the Book of Enoch" by John Beer (Chapter 10) not
only because they deal with the important question of Blake's
philosophy of history (which I should someday like to compare to
Hegel's) but also for the information on the contemporaneous
thought on history that Blake absorbed or reacted to. Given
Blake's hostility and suspicion toward official society, his
conviction that history gets written and interpreted by the
oppressors -- priests and kings and such -- and his general
esoteric view of the world, it becomes understandable how Blake
would be interested in lost history, especially lost religious
history (p. 161).
Helen Bruder's "The sins of the fathers: patriarchal criticism and
THE BOOK OF THEL" (Chapter 9) is essential reading, I would think,
for anyone interested in Blake's relationship to the question of
women. Instead of the usual whining about Blake's supposed
sexism, this author takes to task various male Blake critics who
have slighted THE BOOK OF THEL, thus revealing their own biases in
snubbing and refusing to acknowledge the feminist content of this
work. More importantly, she has some noteworthy observations
concerning Blake's work itself.
I saved the chapter dearest to my heart for last: "Blake,
Democritus, and the 'fluxions of the atom'. Some contexts for
materialist critiques" by Mary Lynn Johnson (Chapter 7). Johnson
writes -- and I agree -- that Blake's relation to science should
not be considered as one of simple opposition, and the
complexities of the question of "materialism" need to be examined
with greater subtlety. Secondly, it is not a simple question of
materialism vs. idealism or spiritualism, because, as she points
out, Atomism and Newtonianism had some strange bedfellows among
religious thinkers in the eighteenth century. John Hutchinson's
MOSES'S PRINCIPIA (1724) is a particularly revealing example. The
coupling of representatives of 'state religion' -- Moses and
British theologians -- with atomistic philosophy and modern
science is a prescription for suspicion on Blake's part. There is
a revealing analysis of Blake's problems with atomism and the
calculus, and one gets a good sense of why he felt that the
propagation of the 'Indefinite' was pulling wool over the eyes of
the people, and why he insisted that a line is a line in its
minutest parts. I have long been intrigued by the subtleties of
"Mock On, Mock On", whose meaning I have found far from
self-evident, and here I find the best analysis of this poem I
have ever seen. This article is indispensable for someone
interested in these matters.
This has been more of a book report than a review, but I have been
away from Blake scholarship for so long, I don't really know what
is going on. It is hard for me to believe the editors' claims
that an incisive historical approach to Blake could possibly be
neglected at such a late date, but given the pervasive corruption
of academia, as evidenced of late by postmodernism, I should not
be surprised at anything. In any case, these essays individually
and collectively inspire a number of historical questions I should
like to raise myself.
[8 August 1995]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 15:29:54 -0400
From: jhmorg00@pop.uky.edu (j. morgan )
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake, Epic, and Allegory
Message-Id: <199508081929.PAA12878@service1.uky.edu>
After lurking on the list for the better part of a year, and thoroughly
enjoying the discussions to date, I am making my debut by requesting a
little help. I recently became interested in the relationship between "The Four Zoas" and traditional forms of epic and allegory. To date my research has uncovered numerous sources that elucidate theories of allegorical
interpretation, relevant primarily to works in English; however, I have
found very little recent material on Epic theory and/or its relationship to
Blake. Outside of the work done by Wittreich and Curran in the early
seventies, does anyone have suggestions/pointers that might be helpful. You
may direct relies either to the list or my "home" address
(jhmorg00@pop.uky.edu). If anyone is interested in a synopsis of the
results I would be more than happy to provide it, either on a list-wide or
an individual basis. Thanks in advance!
By the by, since I feel I know so many of you so well after eavesdropping
for the last year, I guess it is only fair that I reveal a little bit about
myself. Currently, I am enrolled at the University of Kentucky in the Ph.D.
program. Although Blake and the other Romantics are among my perennial
interests, I am attempting to avoid being locked in to studying/teaching a
single period by focussing my studies on genres (hence the interest in
epic). Well, this is probably more than you wanted to know, so I will cut
the bandwidth short while I still can.
I hope you all enjoy what is left of the summer.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 22:15:54 -0400
From: WaHu@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake, Epic, and Allegory
Message-Id: <950808221550_50914680@aol.com>
The best book ever written on allegory is Allegory: The Theory of a Symolic
Mode, by Angus Fletcher. I have an old Cornell U. Paperback edition. Find
it. Read learn mark & inwardly digest it. Great stuff. And by the way,
Here we are at Parnasus, welcome to the feast.
Hugh Walthall
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 09:58:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Avery F. Gaskins"
To:
Subject: Blake and Epic
Message-Id: <9508091358.AA12892@uu6.psi.com>
Blake was very much influenced in his thinking about the epic by his friendship with the painter Benjamin Haydon. There was a good article on this subject done in the '80's, but I can't find it at present. If I do, I'll post the reference for those who are interested.
Avery Gaskins gaskins@wvnvm.wvnet.edu
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 09 Aug 95 11:41:56 EDT
From: Bill Richey
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake and Epic
Message-Id: <9508091554.AA05048@uu6.psi.com>
Jos. Wittreich has done most of the work on Blake & epic theory, analyzing the influence on Blake of his patron, William Hayley. In addition to his
essay in _Blake's Sublime Allegory_, Wittreich's main essay on this subj.
is "Domes of Mental Pleasure: B's Epics and Hayley's Epic Theory" (_Studies in Philology_ 69 [1972]:16-44). I would, however, suggest that you also take a look at Judith Wardle's essay, "Satan not having the Science of Wrath, but only of Pity" (Studies in Romanticism 13 [1974]: 147-54) in which she calls into question many of Wittreich's arguments.
Bill Richey
------------------------------
Date: 10 Aug 1995 21:12:15 U
From: "Tom Vogler"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake, Epic, and Allegor
Message-Id:
Reply to: RE>Blake, Epic, and Allegory
Some people still think my _Preludes to Vision: The Epic Venture in Blake,
Wordsworth, Keats and Hart Crane_. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971) is worth reading on Blake and the epic. More recently, on allegory and Blake I wrote: "The Allegory of Allegory: UnLockeing Blake's `Crystal Cabinet." in _Enlightening Allegory: Theory, Practice, and Contexts of Allegory in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries_. Ed. Kevin L. Cope. (New York: AMS Press, 1993 75-130.) The latter is a long discussion of Blake's poem as both an example of and "about" the practice of allegory. Hope these are of some interest and use.
--------------------------------------
Date: 8/8/95 2:06 PM
To: Tom Vogler
From: blake@albion.com
After lurking on the list for the better part of a year, and thoroughly
enjoying the discussions to date, I am making my debut by requesting a
little help. I recently became interested in the relationship between "The
Four Zoas" and traditional forms of epic and allegory. To date my research has uncovered numerous sources that elucidate theories of allegorical
interpretation, relevant primarily to works in English; however, I have
found very little recent material on Epic theory and/or its relationship to
Blake. Outside of the work done by Wittreich and Curran in the early
seventies, does anyone have suggestions/pointers that might be helpful. You
may direct relies either to the list or my "home" address
(jhmorg00@pop.uky.edu). If anyone is interested in a synopsis of the
results I would be more than happy to provide it, either on a list-wide or
an individual basis. Thanks in advance!
By the by, since I feel I know so many of you so well after eavesdropping
for the last year, I guess it is only fair that I reveal a little bit about
myself. Currently, I am enrolled at the University of Kentucky in the Ph.D.
program. Although Blake and the other Romantics are among my perennial
interests, I am attempting to avoid being locked in to studying/teaching a
single period by focussing my studies on genres (hence the interest in
epic). Well, this is probably more than you wanted to know, so I will cut
the bandwidth short while I still can.
I hope you all enjoy what is left of the summer.
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Subject: Blake, Epic, and Allegory
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------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 00:50:24 -0400
From: WomansWay@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com, in%blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Blake Archive
Message-Id: <950811005023_71636199@aol.com>
Many praises to those working on the Blake Archive. I could not believe my
eyes when I saw your posting! This is a historical event. Blake's art is
finally being liberated!
When will images/ CD ROMs be available to down load/purchase? How long will
it take to down load and what is the best type of modem? Will the image
quality be good enough to enlarge through projection (25 feet high)? We would love to be able to use these scans for the Virtual Sets for the Milton opera.
What about copyright issues?
Eagerly awaiting!,
Dana Harden
------------------------------
Date: 12 Aug 95 06:14:03 EDT
From: Tom Byrne <100534.2363@compuserve.com>
To: Blake List
Subject: Hello / Particular Blakean Interests
Message-Id: <950812101403_100534.2363_HHN35-1@CompuServe.COM>
Hello.
As requested by the reply from the mailing list, this is my brief introductory
note.
I have been a fan of Blake for a number of years, particularly the prophetic
books.
At the moment I am in the middle of composing a piece of music called "A
Pelagian Mass" (done the first 25 minutes), which concerns itself with the
theology of Pelagius, a British heretic of the 5th Century, who asserted that
salvation was possible through one's own efforts. I am paralleling this with
Blake's story of the struggle of Los to build Golgonooza.
The state of ULRO also has an affinity with the Wasteland of the Grail legends, and the fall and projected rise of Albion is very reminiscent of the Arthurian legend, a point emphasised by Blake in the "Descriptive Catalogue".
Blake is therefore a good quarry of ideas, since:
'All things Begin & End in Albions Ancient Druid Rocky Shore.'
Any comments, pointers or advice are much appreciated.
Regards
Tom Byrne
--------------------------------
End of blake-d Digest V1995 Issue #7
************************************