Unit information: William Blake in 2009/10

Unit name	William Blake
Unit code	ENGL29009
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Mr. Donaldson
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of English
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit will offer, by means of informed discussion, an investigating of the interest, distinctiveness and significance of Blake as a writer. Poems studied will include Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and the pre-prophetic books, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Urizen, among others, and the later prophetic and visionary works, Milton and Jerusalem. Prose studied will include The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake's writings about his engravings and paintings, and his annotations and letters. Blake's changing critical reputation will be a secondary but sustained concern.

Aims:

The unit aims to provide students with a critical understanding of Blakes writings in verse and prose. Students will be expected to acquire a detailed and in-depth understanding of Blakes writings: in particular, his early lyrics, his minor prophecies or pre-prophetic poems, his later lyric poems, his prophetic and epic poems, his philosophical prose works, his catalogue and notebook writings, his marginalia on art and on aspects of contemporary social, religious and intellectual life, and his letters. Students will also be expected to acquire a working knowledge of contexts to these writings: biographical, socio-political, cultural and literary. Students will acquire their critical understanding of Blakes art through their primary and secondary reading and through the experience of enquiring into Blakes writings (and engraved designs) in the seminars.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students should have read widely in, and have acquired a historically aware and critically independent knowledge and understanding of, Blakes writings. Through their reading of the critical record, they should also have acquired an informed understanding of Blakes reception, during his lifetime and afterwards, and of the continuing critical debates that his works give rise to. They should thus have developed a deepened appreciation of Blakes creativity.

Teaching Information

Weekly seminars.

Assessment Information

Two summative essays: one 2,000 word essay (33.3%); and one 4,000-word essay (66.7%).

Reading and References

• Blakes Poetry and Designs, edited by Mary Lynn Johnson and John E. Grant, Norton Critical Edition (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1979; Second Edition, 2008)

• Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947)

• David V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954; 2nd. ed., rev., 1969; 3rd. ed., 1977)

• Zachary Leader, Reading Blakes Songs (Boston and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981)

• Heather Glen, Vision & Disenchantment: Blakes Songs & Wordsworths Lyrical Ballads (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)

• Saree Makdisi, William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)