English 931:  English Authors after 1800   

 

William Blake


Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews; 472-1806
office: 2-3T, 2-4R and by appointment


Required Texts:

The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman
      also available on line through this link
Kathleen Raine, William Blake
William Vaughan, William Blake

Recommended Optional Text:

William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books, ed. David Bindman

Objectives of This Course:

William Blake (1757-1827) is famous as both a poet and a visual artist. He developed a type of illustrated poetry he called "illuminated poetry," in which virtually every page includes both words and visual images. Meanwhile, during Blake's lifetime the western world changed irreversibly as a consequence of three great revolutions : the Industrial, the American, and the French. Blake's poetry and visual art records his responses to these changes and his vision of the complex relationships among individuals, humanity, history, God, and the arts. Blake's poetry is more than just "The Tiger" and "The Lamb," which are his most famous works: he also composed longer and more difficult works that have fascinated and challenged readers for two centuries. In addition, he produced hundreds of exclusively visual works, including paintings, engravings, and illustrations to other authors' works.

Our plates will therefore be very full. We will study Blake's illuminated poetry and his visual art to better understand Blake's unique and ultimately optimistic prophetic vision of humanity and the modern world. In the process, we will explore both the life and times of this remarkable artist and writer. We will try to understand — through individual study, group work, discussion, and self-paced on-line work — to come to a greater appreciation of the particular challenges — and rewards — posed by Blake's complex interdisciplinary art. We will necessarily explore both the nature and the methodologies of scholarly inquiry into interdisciplinary art and into the particular aesthetic, critical, and theoretical problems inherent in works of art — like Blake's — that involve complex relationships among multiple media as well as among author, audience, texts, and textuality. In the process, we will consider the applicability of both traditional and technologically-enhanced study tools and approaches to this sort of art. 

Teaching Method and Course Procedures:

We will work in a computerized classroom in which everyone will be able to study Blake's illuminated poetry and his visual art in on-line form as well as in conventional print formats, illustrated and otherwise. Because every colored copy of Blake's poems is unique and different from other copies, the computers will allow us to study different versions side by side, as well as enable us to access relevant on-line supplementary materials. 

Because we will comprise a modest-sized study group, I shall ask that we work as a symposium, rather than a traditional seminar, because symposia are inherently more egalitarian and less teacher-centered. Like any dynamic group of scholars, we shall do best when we teach one another, question one another, and push one another. That sort of procedure raises the level of everything we attempt, including the intensity of our thinking and our conversations, since much is always at stake for us as a group. I encourage each of you to take the lead in taking classroom control away from me and steering the ship on a smooth and lovely course.

I expect that we shall do a good deal of work on the classroom computers during our sessions, in ways that will become evident as we proceed. I hope everyone will feel free to explore the many possibilities — both for scholarship and for teaching — the electronic gateway to Blake's art places quite literally at our fingertips. In addition, you will all be able to access a variety of on-line materials for study outside the classroom, whether through the electronically linked course documents or through your own access to the Internet.

Course Requirements:

Your course grade will be based on the following components, in these weighted percentages:

What You Can Expect to Do in This Course:

We will explore the full range of Blake's verbal and visual art, which will involve us in poetry and prose as well as the visual arts, including Blake's unique art form:  illuminated printing. We will do our best to approach Blake's art and thought through a double perspective:  (1) as scholars working in 2005 who have available a vast array of digital, electronic, and bibliographical tools, plus a variety of theoretical and critical models and approaches, and (2) as scholars interested in assessing and recovering the historical, cultural, political, aesthetic, and ideological contexts of Blake's lifetime, c. 1757-1827. I shall assume nothing about anyone's prior experience and expertise; we will do our work as a group of inquisitive scholars and colleagues, talking about our impressions of what we read, comparing notes, and attempting to deepen our appreciation for Blake's art and its many contexts.

Please be prepared to talk freely and often. We shall be most successful if we move immediately into a conversational mode.

I will expect everyone to prepare a research-based project by the end of the semester. This may take the form of a traditional research "paper," or it may be prepared as an electronic project. I will also entertain proposals for other nontraditional projects, including creative works that build up[on the work we shall do over the course of the semester.
 

Additional Considerations:

I will try to be as fully available to you as my teaching and other commitments permit me to be. Please feel free to come chat with me about any aspect of the course: about any problems you may be having, insights you have gained, enthusiasms you have developed — whatever. I will keep my announced office hours unless something arises unexpectedly, in which case I (or someone else) will post an explanatory note. Because I am on campus a good deal, it is usually possible to arrange some alternative time to chat.