Words of Eternity: Blake and the Poetics of the Sublime

Vincent Arthur De Luca

Published by Princeton University Press 1991

Words of Eternity

Blake and the Poetics of the Sublime

Vincent Arthur De Luca

Volume 1164 in the series Princeton Legacy Library

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400861781

Overview
Contents

About this book

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 Georgia

Originally 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.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
ILLUSTRATIONS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
TEXTS AND ABBREVIATIONS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
PART ONE: THEORY
CHAPTER ONE. Blake's Concept of the Sublime Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
PART TWO: STYLE: SUBLIME EFFECTS
CHAPTER TWO. The Bardic Style: Sublime Extension Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
CHAPTER THREE. The Iconic Style: Sublime Concentration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
CHAPTER FOUR. Narrative Sequences: Modes of Organization Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
PART THREE: WORLDVIEW: IMAGERY OF SUBLIME SETTINGS
CHAPTER FIVE. The Setting of Nature and the Ruins of Time Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
CHAPTER SIX. The Setting of the Divided Nations: The Antiquarian Sublime Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
CHAPTER SEVEN. The Settings of Signs: Language and the Recovery of Origins Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
EPILOGUE. Blake's Sublime in the Romantic Context Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233

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