Thinking Through Blake: Essays in Literary Contrariety

Hazard Adams

Language: English

Publisher: McFarland

Published: Mar 12, 2014

Description:

A seminal figure in Romantic poetry and visual arts, William Blake continues to influence modern literary criticism. In this book, Blake scholar Hazard Adams presents a selection of essays that span his long career exploring the work and thought of the groundbreaking artist. Topics range from the symbolic form in Blake's poem Jerusalem , the world view of Blake in relation to cultural policy and the notion of contrariety in Blake's writings to the relation of Chinese literary thought to that of the West, the critical work of Northrop Frye and Murray Krieger and the cultural and academic status of the humanities. The essays chart the evolution of Adams' own neo-Blakean literary thought over the past four decades, chronicling an effort to seek not merely a method but a philosophical base for the practice of literary criticism.

About the Author

Professor emeritus at the University of Washington's department of comparative literature, Hazard Adams lives in Shelton, Washington. He is known internationally as a scholar of William Blake, W.B. Yeats, Joyce Cary, and the history of criticism.