Blake :
Northeast Modern Language Association Convention
Hartford, Connecticut
March 30-31, 2001
William Blake is undoubtedly one of the most prolific poets in the
language. The groundbreaking work of Damon, Frye, Bloom and Erdman, among
others, has taught us how to read Blake on his own terms, and in relation
to his immediate milieu. Recent years have shown a dramatic increase in
historicist work on William Blake. Is it possible to respect the
difficulty, originality and figural wealth (not to say madness) of Blake's
texts, while simultaneously remaining responsible to historically informed
questions of war, class struggles, labor and consumption, not to mention
implications in imperial, national and religious politics, racial
hierarchies and gender issues?
The purpose of the proposed session is therefore two-fold: an attempt to
rescue Blake from being imprisoned in a tower of aesthetic autonomy where
he would have been quite unhappy, if not extremely irate, and an effort to
keep him free from stereotypical ('which side are you on?') treatments
that pretend to address historical, global or political problems only to
end up simplifying the complex poetic inscriptions that are ostensibly
being read. For Blake, the personal is political, but he also demands that
it be figurally exuberant. It is hoped that the panel will be able to
respect this double Blakean imperative: to be historically engaged without
losing sight of the religious, the aesthetic or the intimate.
The focus, then, will be on Blake's singular 'productions of time,' and on
the socio-historic conditions that rhythm these productions--that is, how
the latter inform the former through and through, and vice versa. Perhaps
it is possible to maintain Blake's textual presence as an artist in a wild
and whirling world where the fate of humankind seems to rest on the
apparent instability of a word, an apostrophe (Los[']s Loss), or the
flourish of a paintbrush.
Please send 1-2 page abstracts or completed papers (no attachments
please) by e-mail by September 15, 2000 to:
Snail Mail is also welcome:
Joshua David Gonsalves
452 Riverside Drive, # 42
New York, NY
10027, USA
--Accepted panelists must join NEMLA by November 1, 2000.
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