The Traveller in the Evening: The Last Works of William Blake - Hardcover

Paley, Morton D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199255628 ISBN 13: 9780199255627

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

This is a study of Blake's poetry, art, and thought during the last years of his life, from 1818 to 1827. Morton Paley considers some of Blake's major accomplishments, including Blake's wood engravings for Thornton's Virgil, the separate plate known as The Laocoon, 101 illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, and the great series of Illustrations to the Book of Job. Paley shows us a Blake who has flowered during his late years; a Blake who is free of any "systems," including his own.

About this title

About the Author

Morton D. Paley is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English at the University of California at Berkeley. A well-known and widely-published critic on Romanticism, he received the Distinguished Scholar Award, Keats-Shelley Association of America in 2002, and a festschrift on Romanticism and Millenarianism, ed. Tim Fulford, was published by Palgrave in 2002 in his honour. His publications include: Editor (with Meg Harris Williams), Linguistic Transformations in Romantic Aesthetics from Coleridge to Emily Dickinson. Lewiston, N.Y. Edward Mellen Press. 2002.
Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1999.
Portraits of Coleridge Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1999.
Coleridge's Later Poetry Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1996. 2nd ed., 1999.
Editor, The Last Man by Mary Shelley. With an introduction and notes. Oxford. Oxford University Press. 1994.
Editor (with T. J. Fulford), Coleridge's Visionary Languages Cambridge and New York. Boydell and Brewer. 1993.
Jerusalem by William Blake. A newly edited text, with an introduction, commentaries on the poetry and the designs, and 105 reproductions. London: The Tate Gallery for The William Blake Trust, 1991. The Apocalyptic Sublime London and New Haven. Yale University Press. 1986.
The Continuing City: William Blake's Jerusalem Oxford. The Clarendon Press. 1983.
William Blake Oxford. Phaidon. 1978. German translation by P. - M. Hottenroth. Stuttgart. W. Kohlhammer. 1978. New printing: Ware, Hens. Omega Books. 1983.
(With Robert N. Essick), Robert Blair's The Grave Illustrated by William Blake London. Scolar Press. 1982.
Editor (with Michael Phillips), William Blake: Essays in Honour of Sir Geoffrey Keynes Oxford. The Clarendon Press. 1973.
Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the Development of Blake's Thought Oxford. The Clarendon Press. 1970.
Editor, Twentieth Century Interpretations of Songs of Innocence and of Experience Englewood Cliffs, N. J. Prentice-Hall. 1969.

Review

"[A] superbly lucid and learned account of Blake's late works."--Times Literary Supplement

"Few scholars other than Morton D. Paley would be capable of executing a project as complex as this, that is, one requiring simultaneously an intimate familiarity with both the literary and artistic traditions as they culminated in Jerusalem.... Paley's narrative is suffused with a tangible sense of grace."--Wordsworth Cicle

"IThe Traveller in the Evening extends Morton Paley's distinguished career of scholarship on Blake's art and thought through a detailed reading of work from the last decade of Blake's life.... As is typical of Paley's criticism, Traveller in the Evening displays an encyclopedic knowledge of Blake's art and life as well as an immense erudition about the art world of the time, various strands of apocalyptic religious thought, and the social and cultural milieu of London.... A late and learned contribution to the exegetical tradition on Blake codified by Northrop Frye, and elaborated and extended by Morton Paley's own masterful scholarship for over thirty years. Its comprehensive treatment of Blake's last works is a monument to the ambitions and successes of that tradition."--Studies in Romanticism

"Thoroughly researched, gracefully written, and unique in subject matter, this important volume considers artistic and literary works from the last ten years of Blake's life. Paley's previous bookshave made him one of the most influential of Blake scholars.... Highly recommended."--Choice

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0199255628
• ISBN 13: 9780199255627
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 332