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Edited by Morris Eaves Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2003 xix + 302 pp. ISBN 0-521-78147-7 (hardback);
ISBN 0-521-78677-0 (paperback)
L45 (hardback);
L15.95, $22.00 (paperback)
Cambridge Companions to Literature Keywords English literature, Poetry
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120310490688
William Blake (1757-1827) is one of the most enigmatic, mysterious and interesting figures in English literature: prophet, poet, visionary and engraver, whom few even today would dare fully to understand. He was quite unlike the Augustans who came before him or the Romantics who came after him. His loneliness has to be discerned in terms of symbolism, imagery and simplicity, rare among poets, and proclaiming essentially an elemental mysticism that must in the end defy alike rationalism and intellectualism.
Writings about him and his various works are necessarily innumerable...