William Blake and romantic biology : evolution, originality, and organic form / Tara Lee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lee, Tara (College teacher), Author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in Romanticism.

Cambridge studies in Romanticism

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Blake, William, 1757-1827--Political and social views.

Blake, William.

Literature and science--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Literature and science.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Literature and society.

Science in literature.

Romanticism--Great Britain.

Romanticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 264 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Summary:

Blake's unique pronouncements on spirituality and embodiment, revolutionary politics, sexuality and genius, as well as on textual and artistic reproduction, were formulated in opposition to the pre-Darwinian theories of evolution and self-organisation emerging over the course of the long eighteenth century. Over the last two decades, literary critics have uncovered the many ways in which discoveries in the life sciences led the Romantics to increasingly understand art and life in terms of matter's vibrant powers of self-organisation. Here, however, Tara Lee shows how Blake was influenced by a preformationist paradigm that privileged the unique kernel of identity in each being over material processes of change and development. Readers will leave this book with a greater appreciation for how Blake's works were in intimate dialogue with a range of intellectual discourses - political, theological, poetic, aesthetic - that were shaped by vibrant debates about embodiment and organic form.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title

Series information

Title page

Imprints page

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Redefining Life with William Blake

0.1 'Embryos of Existence, Free': Romanticism and the Rise of Developmental Biology

0.2 'Where Contrarieties Are Equally True': Preformation and Epigenesis in Blake's Myth

0.3 Generation and Regeneration: William Blake and the Logic of Life

0.4 William Blake against Plasticity: Spirituality, Politics, Poetics, Aesthetics

Chapter 1 'Living Form is Eternal Existence': Blake and Romantic Biology

1.1 'Fortuitous Assemblages': The Case against Epigenesis

1.2 'Primordial Foundations': The Appeal of Preformation

1.3 '[T]he crown of nature's development': Contesting Romantic Ideals of Individuation

1.4 'All Forms are Perfect in the Poets Mind': Depicting Human Difference

Chapter 2 'It is Raised/a Spiritual Body': Blake and the Preformationist Sciences of the Soul

2.1 'Our Seminal Part': Blake and the Spiritual Body

2.2 '[A]ptly made the emblem of man': Blakean Images of Resurrection

2.3 'We are not One: we are Many': Blake's Ecological Consciousness

2.4 '[A] kind of unfolding or unswathing': Reading the Blakean Book

Chapter 3 'Intelligent, organiz'd': Blake and the French Revolution

3.1 The 'Blacksmith Midwives' of Liberty: Burke, Blake, and the Revolution In Utero

3.2 '[L]iving flames/ Intelligent, organiz'd': The French Revolution and the Biopolitics of Vitality

3.3 '[A] body of binding laws': The Book of Urizen and the Social Contract

3.4 '[O]rganizing every thing by a disorganizing principle': Autopoiesis and Self-Annihilation in The Four Zoas

Chapter 4 '[E]mbryon nerves': Manuscript Autopoiesis and Materialist Psychology in The Four Zoas.

4.1 A 'Labyrinth more tortuous than that of Daedalus': Urizen and the Materialist Brain

4.2 '[A]nimated by a fluid': Tharmas and Liquid Cognition

4.3 'Reasoning from the Loins': Luvah and Self-Interest

4.4 'Perverse, Wayward': The Four Zoas as Hysteric Text

Chapter 5 'From sires to sons, unknown to sex': Gender, Genius, and the Evolution of Sex in Milton

5.1 'A mournful form double': Darwin, Boehme, and the Birth of the Sexes

5.2 'His Forming Image': Hayley, Milton, and Sexuality of Genius

5.3 '[M]ighty Father of the Epic line': Male Genius and Queer Inheritance

5.4 'This Natural Religion': Darwin, Knight, and the Sexual Origins of the Sacred

Chapter 6 '[E]mbodied and organized in solid marble': Blake's Critique of Neoclassical Organicism

6.1 '[O]riginal to it-self': The Romantic Myth of Classical Autochthony

6.2 'disjecta membra': Organic Unity and the Cult of the Classical Fragment

6.3 'Original Derivations': Blake's Laocoon(s) and the Secret History of Art

6.4 '[T]he bright Sculptures of/ Los's Halls': Joseph of Arimathea, Reynold's Discourses, and the Sacred Art of Copying

Conclusion: Blake and the (Post)Human

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 26 Mar 2026).

ISBN:

1-009-62646-9

1-009-62642-6