Overview
William Blake is known as one of the nineteenth century's greatest poets and prophets of the imagination. This new volume from the Bloom's Classic Critical Views series examines his poetry-including Jerusalem, Milton, and The Four Zoas-with selections of the best criticism from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Synopsis
William Blake is known as one of the nineteenth century's greatest poets and prophets of the imagination. This new volume from the Bloom's Classic Critical Views series examines his poetry-including Jerusalem, Milton, and The Four Zoas-with selections of the best criticism from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Children's Literature
Harold Bloom of The Western Canon (1994) who created such literary huffs and puffs, here gives his imprimatur to a series of biographical and critical collections based on his writers of choice. Bloom's general introduction is followed by a Blake-specific one, primarily concerned with defining Bloom's interpretation of "canon." Would that he had stopped there, for when he focuses on William Blake's two poems, "London" and "Tyger," Bloom's exegesis is so involuted that he manages to destroy every shred of poetic feeling—till both terror and joy have vanished from Blake's visionary poems. The series, then, is obviously keyed to beginning hardcore literary students. Getting past Bloom's introductions, the book also contains a brief biography of Blake and a selection of essays on his work—one dealing with Blake's art, although no visual examples are given. The title concludes with a good chronology of the writer's life, source material, and an index.