Blake's Poetry and Designs (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Blake, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039392498X ISBN 13: 9780393924985

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007

Synopsis

The Second Edition of this revered Norton Critical Edition is the most comprehensive introduction to Blake’s poetry and thought available.

In addition to a broad selection of the poems, the volume includes over 100 images (16 in color), emphasizing the centrality of pictorial representations to Blake’s verse. Biographical context is provided through dozens of excerpts from Blake’s notebook, letters, marginalia, and other writings. “Criticism” offers twenty wide-ranging commentaries by writers from Blake’s contemporaries to present-day critics, among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Northrop Frye, Allen Ginsberg, Morris Eaves, Harold Bloom, Alicia Ostriker, John Mee, Saree Makdisi, and Julia Wright. A section on Textual Technicalities, a Chronology of Blake’s life and work, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines are also included.

About this title

From the Back Cover

This thoroughly revised Second Edition of a perennial favorite in the Norton Critical Editions series, energized by recent scholarly discoveries and new links to the William Blake Archive (blakearchive.org) and other online resources, maintains its predecessors emphasis on the visual and verbal artistry of Blake's self-published works in illuminated printing. The new edition features more than a hundred designs, 16 in color; freshly annotated and re-edited complete texts of the illuminated books, now including the full text of *Jerusalem*, and a generous selection of Blake's other writings.

An expanded "Criticism" section presents 20 appraisals of Blake's work from his own time to the present. New to "Comments by Contemporaries" is Robert Hunt's devastating review of Blake's one-artist show in 1809, to which Blake responded with vitriolic epigrams and the creation of a major villain. "Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Perspectives," now introduced by Allen Ginsberg's personal vision of Blake, preserves earlier commentary by Northrop Frye, Martin K. Nurmi, and Harold Bloom, while adding W. J. T. Mitchell's recognition of the "Dangerous Blake," Joseph Viscomi's detective work on Blake's relief etching process Alicia Ostriker's multi-layered feminist analysis, historicist-cultural studies by Jon Mee, Saree Makdisi, and Julia Wright, and assessments of text-design permutations by Nelson Hilton, Stephen Behrendt, Morris Eaves, and V. A. De Luca.

Also included are an Introduction, a guide to Key Terms, a discussion of Textual Technicalities, a chronology of Blake's Life and Times, a Selected Bibliography, three maps, and Index of Sources, and an Index of Titles and First Lines.

About the Author

John E. Grant is Professor Emeritus of English, University of Iowa. He previously taught at the University of Connecticut. His publications include Discussions of William Blake and Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic.

Mary Lynn Johnson is Special Assistant Emerita, President's Office, University of Iowa. She is the co-author of Blake's ’Four Zoas’: The Design of the Dream.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 039392498X
• ISBN 13: 9780393924985
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 656
• Editor: Grant John E., Johnson Mary Lynn