Description
Book SynopsisIt has been clear from the beginning that William Blake was both a political radical and a radical psychologist. In
William Blake on Self and Soul, Laura Quinney uses her sensitive, surprising readings of the poet to reveal his innovative ideas about the experience of subjectivity.
Trade ReviewQuinney powerfully rereads both Blake's early work and his later visionary poems as an unfolding record of the embattled psyche. This extremely important contribution to our understanding of Blake should appeal not just to Blakeans but to all who think about the psychology of transcendence. -- Paul Fry, Yale University
Much of William Blake's most extraordinary work depends on his concept of 'Selfhood.' Laura Quinney has gone beyond all previous attempts to deal with Blake's treatment of what it means to be a solitary consciousness. Quinney illuminates Blake's very original relationship to the Gnostic heresy and his astonishing vision of what might redeem our humanity without falling into received doctrines. -- Harold Bloom
Quinney's readings of Blake's works, from
Thel to
Jerusalem, offer much insight, particularly when she engages with the debates of Blake's time. -- Shirley Dent * Times Literary Supplement *
Table of Contents* Preface * Acknowledgments * A Note on Citation * Introduction: The Impossible Self * Empiricism and Despair * Wordsworth, Plato, and Blake * The Four Zoas: Transcendental Remorse * Milton: The Guarded Gates * Jerusalem: The Will to Solitude * Notes * Bibliography * Index
