Reading William Blake

224 Pages·1992·21.575 MB·English

by  Stephen C. Behrendt (auth.)

Reading William Blake
Stephen C. Behrendt
READING WILLIAM BLAKE
Also by Stephen C. Behrendt
HISTORY AND MYTH: ESSAYS ON ENGLISH ROMANTIC
LITERATURE (editor)
THE MOMENT OF EXPLOSION: BLAKE AND THE
ILLUSTRATION OF MILTON
SHELLEY AND HIS AUDIENCES
P.B. SHELLEY, ZASTROZZI AND ST. IRVYNE (editor)
APPROACHES TO TE AC HING SHELLEY'S
FRANKENSTEIN (editor)
Reading
William Blake
STEPHEN C. BEHRENDT
Professor of English
University of Nebraska, Lincolrz
M
MACMILLAN
© Stephen C. Behrendt 1992
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1992978-0-333-52484-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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First published 1992 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LT D
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Edited and typeset by Grahame & Grahame Editorial Brighton
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Behrendt, Stephen
Reading William Blake
I. Title
821
ISBN 978-1-349-38959-9 ISBN 978-0-230-38016-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230380165
for Joseph Wittreich
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Contents
Preface viii
List of Plates x
Key to Abbreviations xi
A Note on Copies xii
1 Introduction: Reading Blake's Texts 1
The Illuminated Page 12
An Example: Five Plates from America 25
2 Songs of Innocence and of Experience 36
The Songs in Context 42
The Songs and the Reader 51
3 Three Early IIIuminated Works 73
The Book of Thel 74
Visions of the Daughters of Albion 84
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 93
4 Lambeth Prophecies I: History of the World 101
Reconstituting History 105
Metamorphosis and Encyclopedic AIIusion 113
5 Lambeth Prophecies II: History of the Universe 125
Inversion, Reversal, and the Ways of Seeing 126
Myth, Metamorphosis and the Nature of Reality 143
6 Epic Art: Milton and Jerusalem 152
Milton and Epic Art 153
Jerusalem and the Eternal Community 165
Notes 174
Index 191
VB
Preface
This book explores the dynamics of the reading process involved in
reading William Blake's illuminated poems. Those poems include
on the same pages verbal texts and visual texts that often seem
to be at odds with one another or even, at times, to be entirely
unrelated. Because reading verbal texts and visual texts involves
different aesthtic assumptions and operations, the texts of Blake's
iIluminated pages simultaneously make different demands on their
readers, which further complicates the reading activity. I have
not attempted here to offer a comprehensive reading of Blake's
poetry. Rather, I have explored some of the demands that Blake's
illuminated texts place upon us as part of the process of reading and
comprehension. I have tried to outline some of the ways in which the
intellectual and imaginative transaction proceeds between author
and reader via the medium of the iIIurninated text as physical
artifact. That text comprises a fertile intersection among frequently
differing <and in no case identical) systems of reference applied to
the text by author and readers, each of whom brings to the reading
activity different degrees of cultural conditioning.
I wish to thank the University of Nebraska Research Council for
funding that enabled me to conduct research at some of the most
important Blake collections, as weIl as for the summer fellow
ship that enabled me to devote the summer of 1990 to the final
stages of this study. I thank, too, the National Endowmnent for
the Humanities for a Travel Grant that facilitated my return to
England to conduct additional research as the project neared its
conclusion.
I am grateful for the advice and assistance I have received at
numerous institutions whose Blake collections have figured in my
research for this book. Arnong these, I extend special thanks to
the staffs 01 the Tate Gallery (and to Martin Butlin especially), the
Fitzwilliam Museum (and Jane Munro), the British Museum, the
Library of Congress and the Huntington Library.
To those colleagues and friends who graciously read and com
mented on parts of the manuscript, and especially to Marcia Pointon,
I extend my thanks as weil. To Patricia FIanagan Behrendt I owe a
particular debt of gratitude, both for her insightful readings of the
viii
Preface ix
manuscript in its various stages and for her unfailing support and
enthusiasm.
Studying with Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr., at the University of
Wisconsin some twenty years ago, I came to what is proving to be
a life-Iong interest in Blake and in the lively and complex milieu of
his times. To this superbly gifted scholar, stimulating colleague and
good friend, I dedicate this book.
STEPHEN C. BEHRENDT