Words of eternity : Blake and the poetics of the sublime / Vincent Arthur De Luca.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Luca, V. A. (Vincent Arthur), 1940- author.

Series:

Princeton Legacy Library

Princeton legacy library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sublime, The, in literature.

Blake, William, 1757-1827--Criticism and interpretation.

Blake, William.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1991]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

William Blake called himself a "sublime Artist" and acknowledged his own power to create "the Most Sublime Poetry." Words of Eternity reveals the fundamental importance of the term "sublime" in a defining of Blake's poetic achievement. This first full-length study of Blake and the sublime demonstrates that a sophisticated theory of sublimity permeates his writings, serving him as a personal poetics, a framework in which the difficulties and unusual strategies of the works find their rationale. Vincent De Luca combines historically grounded source study with insights from modern critical theories of textuality to identify Blake's two opposing conceptions of sublimity--a sublime of obscurity, terror, and material power and one of determinate, concentrated intellectual design. De Luca examines the interplay between these two modes from differing perspectives--theoretical, stylistic, and thematic. As the perspectives widen, they embrace many of the speculative systems of Blake's time and reveal these systems as various displaced modalities of an underlying sublime discourse. "Words of Eternity is one of the dozen or so most important books ever written about Blake's poetry. De Luca provides a wealth of new insights on every page."--Robert N. Essick, University of California, Riverside "With the context that this book supplies, we take a quantum leap in the sense we can make of Blake's project. De Luca opens our eyes to a Blake, and a sublime, that will never again be the same for us."--Nelson Hilton, University of GeorgiaOriginally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

TEXTS AND ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: THEORY

CHAPTER ONE. Blake's Concept of the Sublime

PART TWO: STYLE: SUBLIME EFFECTS

CHAPTER TWO. The Bardic Style: Sublime Extension

CHAPTER THREE. The Iconic Style: Sublime Concentration

CHAPTER FOUR. Narrative Sequences: Modes of Organization

PART THREE: WORLDVIEW: IMAGERY OF SUBLIME SETTINGS

CHAPTER FIVE. The Setting of Nature and the Ruins of Time

CHAPTER SIX. The Setting of the Divided Nations: The Antiquarian Sublime

CHAPTER SEVEN. The Settings of Signs: Language and the Recovery of Origins

EPILOGUE. Blake's Sublime in the Romantic Context

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781400861781

1400861780

OCLC:

889254871