Reading Blake's Songs

by Zachary Leader

Overview

First appearing in 1981, this book was the first full-length study of the Songs of Innocence and Experience to be published in almost fifteen years. The book provides detailed readings of each poem and its accompanying design, to redirect attention to the nature and achievement of the book as a whole, to Songs as a single, carefully unified work of verbal and visual art. Particularly close attention is paid, not only to the designs Blake etched to accompany his poems, but also to the many books and treatises for and about children to which, it is argued, Songs alludes or is indebted. Like so many important works of this period, Songs is shown to be autobiographical in nature, one of Blake’s attempts to order and account for the conflicts and crises of his own art and life. Its story is that of an artist’s growth into and out of vision, and of his gradual realization of the dangers and deficiencies of the prophetic mode.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781317381228
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/11/2015
Series:	Routledge Library Editions: William Blake
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	298
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Zachary Leader

Table of Contents

Key-to-References Acknowledgments, Zachary Leader; Introduction, Zachary Leader; A Note on Copies, Zachary Leader; Chapter 1 Children’s Books, Education, and Vision, Zachary Leader; Chapter 2 The Designs, Zachary Leader; Chapter 3 Entering Innocence, Zachary Leader; Chapter 4 Innocence in Maturity, Zachary Leader; Chapter 5 Entering Experience, Zachary Leader; Chapter 6 False Innocence, Zachary Leader; Chapter 7 The Bard Redeemed, Zachary Leader; Notes Notes, Zachary Leader;