Front cover image for Blake's critique of transcendence : love, jealousy, and the sublime in The four Zoas

Blake's critique of transcendence : love, jealousy, and the sublime in The four Zoas

Peter Otto
"Blake's Critique of Transcendence is the most important works in Blake's oeuvre. It uncovers a Blake deeply engaged with the cultural discourses of his time, in profound dialogue with Swedenborg, Locke, and Young. In the course of this conversation, Blake anatomizes a remarkable variety of cultural practices (including religion, science, and art) designed to achieve transcendence. He focuses in particular on the fate of the body in cultures of transcendence, developing perhaps the first theory of sexual sublimation. Blake's radical visual and verbal strategies in this poem are part of an attempt to defer the movement of transcendence, long enough for the reader to see the warring elements of the fallen world as the dismembered body of humanity."--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, 2000
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xiii, 365 p., [8] p. of plates : ill. ; 21 cm.
9780198187196, 019818719X
1170247841
LIST OF PLATES; KEY TO REFERENCES; ABBREVIATIONS; INTRODUCTION; 1. BLAKE, BLAKE CRITICISM AND THE SUBLIME; 3. THE BIRTH OF LOS(S) FROM THARMAS; 7. THE ELABORATION OF LOS(S); 8. URIZEN EXPLORES HIS DENS; 11. DEATH OF THE BODY / LIBERATION OF THE SPIRIT; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX