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Critical Paths

Blake and the Argument of Method

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Pages: 394

Published: November 1987

Editors: Dan Miller, Mark Bracher, Donald Ault

The great expositors of Blake and those who have followed in their footsteps have clarified the most minute particulars of Blake's vision. Now, in the place of traditional exegesis, comes a significantly new set of critical problems and interpretive methods. In this volume of essays, the major shift in Blake studies, already under way in practice, is addressed, gauged, analyzed, and debated.

The contributors assembled here, leading exponents of contemporary critical methods as well as close students of Blake, argue the grounds, purposes, and validity of each approach and then apply its method in detailed readings of Blake's works. We see deconstruction, psychoanalytic interpretation, feminist critique, semiotic analysis, Marxist criticism, revisionism, and other methods brought to bear on Blake's texts and into confrontation with one another by those best able to do so.

Through the essays themselves and in the reaction they will certainly provoke, Critical Paths will bring increased theoretical awareness to the study of Blake and will further the ongoing redefinition of Blake's art. At the same time, the collection investigates the general problem of methodology in literary studies by means of a casebook examination of modern critical approaches. Blake criticism and current literary theory here come together; the encounter illuminates and enriches both.

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Table Of Contents

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Illustrations ix

Key to References xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction / Dan Miller 1

Methods and Limitations / Stephen D. Cox 19

Synecdoche and Method / Hazard Adams 41

Blake's Revisionism: Gnostic Interpretation and Critical Methodology / William Dennis Horn 72

Literal/Tiriel/Material / Nelson Hilton 99

Blake's De-Formation of Neo-Aristotelianism / Donald Ault 111

Blake and the Deconstructive Interlude / Dan Miller 139

Rouzing the Faculties: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Marriage of Heaven and Hell in the Reader / Mark Bracher 168

Blake, Women, and Sexuality / Brenda S. Webster 204

Blake's Feminist Revision of Literary Tradition in "The SICK ROSE" / Elizabeth Langland 225

Representations of Revolution: From The French Revolution to The Four Zoas / David Aers 244

"in vain the Eloquent tongue": An Un-Reading of VISIONS of the Daughters of Albion / Thomas A. Vogler 271

Afterword / David Wagenknecht 310

Notes 329

Index 369

Contributors 381

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-0792-1 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-0751-8 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-9648-2 /

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