Bloom's Major Poets - William Blake - Comprehensive Research and Study Guide (144p) [Inua].pdf

Title: William Blake
Author: Harold Bloom
Series: Bloom's Major Poets
Library Binding: 143 pages
Publisher: Chelsea House Pub (L) (August 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0791068129
ISBN-13: 978-0791068120

Description:
The ideal aid to all students, Bloom's Major Poets is a definitive guide for independent study and a single source for footnoting essays and research papers. Each volume includes: Editor's notes and an introduction; Author's biography; Thematic and structural analysis; Extracts and major critical essays; Extensive bibliography; Index of themes and ideas.

"Bloom's [Bio]Critiques'...should be standard reference material for any in-depth literary library; these carefully edited texts provide powerful studies which are recommended picks for both high school and many a college library...All provide high-quality literary techniques which contrast information and provide students with fine research and focus."

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William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English painter, poet and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham), he produced a diverse and symbolically rich oeuvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".

Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".