Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of William Blake [Paperback]

This book considers Blake's poetry in the light of ideology critique and the traditions of Utopian thought.William Blake's unusual sensitivity to social context has often been noted. Nicholas Williams situates Blake's thought historically by examining detailed readings of Blake's major poems alongside such contemporary parallels as Rousseau's Emile, Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. The author offers revealing new insights into key Blake texts and draws attention to their inclusion of social determinism, theories of ideology-critique and traditions of twentieth-century utopias.William Blake's unusual sensitivity to social context has often been noted. Nicholas Williams situates Blake's thought historically by examining detailed readings of Blake's major poems alongside such contemporary parallels as Rousseau's Emile, Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. The author offers revealing new insights into key Blake texts and draws attention to their inclusion of social determinism, theories of ideology-critique and traditions of twentieth-century utopias.Scholars have often drawn attention to William Blake's unusual sensitivity to his social context. In this book, Nicholas Williams situates Blake's thought historically by showing how through the decades of a long and productive career, Blake consistently responded to the ideas, writing, and art of contemporaries. Williams presents detailed readings of several of Blake's major poems alongside Rousseau's Emile, Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, Paine's Rights of Man, Burke's Reflections of the Revolution in France, and Robert Owen's Utopian experiments. In doing so, he offers revealing new insights into key Blake texts and draws attention to their inclusion of notions of social determinism, theories of ideology-critique and utopian traditions. Williams argues that if welCÜ