Reading William Blake

Reading Writers and their Work

by Saree Makdisi

William Blake (1757‒1827) is one of the most original and influential figures of the Romantic Age, known for his work as an artist, poet and printmaker. Grounding his ideas both in close reading and in the latest scholarship, Saree Makdisi offers an exciting and imaginative approach to reading Blake. By exploring some of the most important themes in Blake's work and connecting them to particular plates from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Makdisi highlights Blake's creative power and the important interplay between images and words. There is a consistent emphasis on the relationship between the material nature of Blake's illuminated books, including the method he used to produce them, and the interpretive readings of the texts themselves. Makdisi argues that the material and formal openness of Blake's work can be seen as the very basis for learning to read in the spirit of Blake.

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Saree Makdisi is an American literary critic of Palestinian and Lebanese descent, specializing in eighteenth and nineteenth century British literature. He also writes on contemporary Arab politics and culture. Makdisi currently holds the title of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA .

Reviews

[Maxwell Foley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this annoyingly postmodernist. I don't know a ton about Blake but it seemed like the author was trying his best to jam whatever Blake have believed and felt entirely into the narrow box of these fashionable literary and academic ideas of our day.

[Peter Rulon-Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

With an ambitious and fantastic introduction (and superb first chapter!), Makdisi urges readers to open horizons for their own perceptions of Blakes work both in form and content. Perhaps the best introduction to the actual body of work in Blake I have read, I call it ambitious because he states "These discussions are not intended to frame or filter particular readings of specific works by Blake but rather simply to open up what I hope will be useful ways of thinking about them."

For any author who has found Blake's work transformative, it is nearly impossible to not offer what they have found at junctions, let alone the end, of their own golden thread. We are however offered, in no uncertain terms, very definitive readings of Blake's work in a with personal and sociopolitical injunctions resulting therefrom.

The conclusions are not particularly offensive. The issue is that although not without ample explication, these conclusions are presented in a way that negates the crisis necessary in the nucleation of self and world. This particularly knotty issue requires an extensive thinking together of author and reader and ultimately cannot be handed over without an insidious exacerbation of the problem of selfhood, while nominally claiming to overcome the problem in a particularly simplistic way.

These are issues that are authentically seen by Blake, and treated more directly than a dry philosophy or psychoanalysis can mull over. However, if one is to ground a political or interpersonal outlook in Blake, that outlook must stand on it's own and not ride Blakean coattails. And if a nucleation of self-and-world or self-and-other is to be promulgated, there is extensive epistemic elaboration that is required to make any argument of authenticity secure its ontological grounding.

To Makdisi's credit, we are also constantly urged towards perception itself rather than the author's own "universal" insights, and I'd recommend this text along with Northrop Frye's "Fearful Symmetry," Kathleen Raine's "Blake and Tradition," Susanne Sklar's essay "Blake's Mythic System," Roderick Tweedy's "The God of the Left Hemisphere," Jerry Caris Goddard’s “Mental forms Creating,” and Leo Damrosch's excellent "Eternity's Sunrise."

Moreover, as these authors do, I urge you to read Blake's work ("play" his work) for your Self!

[Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because it was praised in David Russell’s book on Marion Milner, and because I have always had a fascination with Blake that has never quite managed to flower into a familiarity.

The chapters are short, and usefully concentrated on single ideas that help us navigate Blake’s work. The discussions on desire and joy, and the emphasis on how Blake’s engraving technique mirrors his understanding of artistic making, were great. And whenever reference was made to Blake’s historical context, I learned a great deal.

The book, however, suffers from its academic voice - repetitions and expositions about author intent (“I’m going to talk about this later” and “I’ve already discussed this in chapter …,” as well as “this is an important point:”) would always jar me after reading sentences that seemed inspired and insightful. I found myself having to fight back my academically trained mode of speed reading for ideas, which the language seemed to prompt.

I certainly agree with the back blurbs though: if you’re looking for a concise, frequently insightful introduction to Blake, this is it. Perhaps it can serve as the first step, after which one can tackle Northrop Frye’s study, or better yet the poems themselves.

[Crispin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful contextualising of Blake in his historical/economic setting and illumined political-intellectual-spiritual-artistic idiosyncrasy. At last I feel ready to make my first proper forays into Blake's 'books'...

[Louis Cabri]

I'm so thrilled to have discovered Saree Makdisi's writings. Discovering a critic is sometimes almost as great as discovering a poet.