William Blake's Manuscripts

This collection of essays examines how close analysis of William Blake's manuscripts can yield new discoveries about his techniques, his working habits, and his influences. With the introduction of facsimile editions and more particularly, the William Blake Archive, the largest digital repository of Blake materials online, scholars have been able to access Blake's work in as close its original medium, leading to important insights into Blake's creative process and mythopoetic system. Recent advancements in digital editing and reproduction has further increased interest in Blake's manuscripts. This volume brings together both established Blake scholars, including G.E. Bentley Jnr's final essay on Blake, and upcoming scholars whose research is at the intersection of digital humanities, critical theory, textual scholarship, queer theory, transgender studies, reception history, and bibliographical studies. The chapters seek to cover the breadth of Blake's manuscripts: poetry, letters, notebook entries, and annotations. Together, these chapters offer an overview of the current state of research in Blake studies on manuscripts at a point when his manuscripts have become increasingly available in digital environments, and gesture to a possible future of Blake scholarship in general.

Shows how close analysis of Blake's manuscripts reveals new insights into his creative process and mythopoetic system Covers the breadth of Blake's manuscripts: poetry, letters, notebook entries, and annotations Explores new advances in digital editing and reproduction

Autorentext

**Mark Crosby FSA is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University, USA. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters on William Blake and his patrons, Mark has co-authored, with Robert N. Essick, Genesis: William Blake's Last Illuminated Book (2012) and co-edited Re-envisioning Blake (2012). He is currently finishing a monograph on Blake and patronage.
Josephine McQuail* is Professor of English at Tennessee Tech University, USA. She has published in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly; Modern Language Studies; The New Review of Children's Literature; and has a piece coming out in The Blake Journal* on Blake and the Foundling Hospital.

Inhalt
Introduction: What is Liberty without Universal Toleration: the Recovery, Reconstruction, and Remediation of Blake's Manuscripts.- 1: Hang Philosophy: Blake's Metaphysical Forays in An Island in the Moon.- 2: From Reynolds to Wright of Derby: Visual References in Blake's An Island in the Moon.- 3: Blake and 'the wondrous art of writing: Letter Faces, Letter Formation, Capitalization.- 4: On Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions: Re-assessing Blake's Marginalia to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses.- 5: The Page Embodied: Laying Out The Four Zoas.- 6: Blake's Vala, or, The Four Zoas, and the Antiquarians.- 7: Blake's labyrinth of discordant paths: verbal/visual complexity in the two seventh Nights of The Four Zoas.- 8: Illuminating VALA: A Prolegomenon to a Digital Exhibition of Blake's Manuscript.- 9: All that we See is Vision: William Blake's Four Zoas Manuscript and Multispectral Imaging.- 10: "Go on Conquering: A Re-threshing of Blake's Letters.- 11: From Silken Fetters to Arrows of Desire: Behn, Blake, and the License of Pastoral.- 12: Illuminating Incompleteness: from Tiriel to Blake's Final Imprint.- 13: The Book of Oothoon: Transtextuality, Transexuality, Palimpsests and Skin in Blake's Manuscripts.- 14: "By the Voice of the Servant of the Lord": Blake's New Jerusalem and Swedenborgianism in the work of Sheila Kaye-Smith.