Major Authors and Texts (312-0-20)
Topic
William Blake's Afterlives
Instructors
Tristram Nash Wolff
Meeting Info
Parkes Hall 224: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
William Blake's Afterlives
How did the poetry and visual art of William Blake (1757-1827) come to inspire later artistic misfits and countercultures? Where and how can we trace Blake's visions in the formal experiments and political orientations of modern art and literature? How does his example prepare us to read poetry differently, today? This course explores the unique poetry of Blake alongside its experimental, politically committed, sometimes hallucinogenic afterlives. Blake — a deeply eccentric poet and engraver who was always an odd fit with his British Romantic contemporaries — might be seen as the prototype of the artistic genius outside their time: obscure while he lived, nearly two hundred years after his death he is ever more widely celebrated as a visionary iconoclast and outsider original. The course gives students a strong grounding in some of Blake's own most famous "illuminated" works, including Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and America: A Prophecy, reading these alongside 20th & 21st-century works across and between genres. Emphasis will be placed on the poetic inventiveness of Blake's mixed-media forms, and his reinvention of the book, as we compare his illuminated poetry and innovative printing techniques with successors in poetry as well as across artistic media (including abstract expressionism, beat poetry, punk rock, and film media). Teaching Method: Brief lectures & seminar discussion. Evaluation Method: short writing assignments, final project.
Learning Objectives
To practice close reading, interpretation, and analysis of poetic texts;
To introduce students to the poetry and art of one of English literature's most notorious figures;
To link the field of literary studies, through poetry, with other artistic forms and media; and to study forms of cultural influence, by treating ideas as historical "objects" that persist and change over time;
To develop advanced oral presentation skills, including participating in and leading seminar-style discussions and making presentations supported by audio and/or visual media;
To write advanced analytical papers, unfolding persuasive claims in lucid, well-structured prose; and to improve writing and speaking as cultural critics, using Blake and his afterlives to recognize how philosophical and political ideas are materialized in aesthetic form.
Class Materials (Required)
Required Materials NB: available at Bookends & Beginnings (or online); other materials supplied
Saree Makdisi, Reading William Blake (ISBN: 0521128412)
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience (ISBN: 0192810898)
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (ISBN: 0192811673)
blank notebook, standard size, for journal entries and short writing assignments
For most classes, you will be consulting the website, blakearchive.org. Additional or secondary texts will be made available as PDFs through our Canvas site as needed.
Class Attributes
Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area