Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake

Whittaker (William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience), head of the University of Lincoln’s School of English and Journalism, presents an insightful guide to the artistry of William Blake (1757–1827), as revealed in major works from Poetical Sketches (1783) to Jerusalem (1804–1820). Focusing on how political and religious currents affected Blake’s art, Whittaker shows, in particular, how the idealistic hopes raised by the French Revolution among Blake and his contemporaries led him to imagine how his own society could be liberated from oppressive political structures and social strictures. Going work by work, Whittaker shows how Blake formed a “bizarre and strange cosmology” that, using repurposed elements from Christianity and Blake’s own imagination, presented Satan as an ambivalent and sometimes admirable figure of liberation and “attributed demonic aspects to the traditional conception of God.” With more than 70 color prints, Whittaker also exhibits how Blake’s work as an engraver and printmaker illuminated his poetry. Though Blake fell out of fashion in an increasingly reactionary and militarized Britain and died in relative obscurity, his reputation and influence were resurrected, Whittaker notes, by later generations of artists, from Aldous Huxley to the Doors. Whittaker makes a strong case for why Blake remains “one of the greatest poets and artists ever to have lived in the British Isles.” (Jan.)