William Blake's illuminated poems challenge their readers to participate fully in a highly interactive process of reading. The complex interaction of their verbal and visual texts forces the involved reader to assume greater responsibility than usual for formulating meaning. The physical and aesthetic complexities of these two "languages," which communicate in significantly different fashion, generates on the illuminated page a sort of "metalanguage," in which both components contribute without fully surrendering either their unique disciplinary features or their claims upon the workings of the reader's consciousness.
This book examines some of the ways in which Blake's illuminated poems subvert the customary authority of texts and force their readers to reassess both their own expectations about the reading activity and their customary responses to words and visual images alike. In the process, the book explores -- in particular relation to many of Blake's poems -- the dynamics of the unique and challenging reading experience into which Blake's illuminated poems thrust their readers.
London: Macmillan / New York: St. Martin's, 1992