William Blake
Reviewed questions grounded in the Encyclopedia entry on William Blake.
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Questions for discussion
Life and Vision4 questions+
How does Blake’s continuing work as a professional engraver complicate the image of an isolated visionary?→ What does Catherine Blake’s role in printing and colouring reveal about the making of the illuminated books?→ How should we distinguish the later stories of Blake’s childhood visions from the testimony of people who knew him as an adult?→ Why does Blake identify imagination with the divine body rather than with fancy?→
Division and Forgiveness4 questions+
What changes when the fall is understood as a division within the human being?→ How can creation be both a consequence of the fall and an act of mercy?→ Why does distinguishing a person from a state matter for Blake’s understanding of forgiveness?→ What is lost when reason becomes independent of imagination in the figure of the Spectre?→
Art and Inheritance4 questions+
How does Blake’s union of words and images make artistic technique part of his religious argument?→ Why does the entry distinguish Blake’s use of Neoplatonic imagery from agreement with Neoplatonic doctrine?→ What limits does the evidence place on describing Blake as a Gnostic or a Kabbalist?→ How do political, esoteric, and theological readings change what we notice in Blake’s work?→