Mee, Jon. Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.

Grinnell library catalog page

This book examines William Blake’s most explicitly radical period so as not only to provide the basis for better judgments of work post-1800 but also to specifically emphasize that "if the modern reader finds little like Blake's illuminated books in the other literature of the time, it is because our knowledge is filtered through the canonical construction of Romanticism" (18-19). Mee underscores Blake's work to be flooded in political significance, positing throughout that radical discourse affects Blake's entire lexicon and claiming Blake as an integral part of a complex political atmosphere surrounding the French Revolution controversy.

The book's structure manifests Mee's version of the 'bricolage,’ an approach he defines as "unapologetically recombin[ing] elements from across discourse boundaries such that the antecedent discourses are fundamentally altered in the resultant structures" (3). Mee examines how Blake's own work from the 1790s drew upon very different discourses, and his book chapters each gain organization from these discourses. These discourses include: popular traditions of millenarianism, the belief in an imminent return of Christ to reign in a millennium, a Christian doctrine mentioned in the Book of Revelations; antinomianism, the belief that the Gospel frees Christians from required obedience to any law and that salvation is attained solely through faith and the gift of divine grace; literary primitivism, the belief that primitive peoples were more noble and less flawed because they had not been subjected to the tainting influence of civilized society; mythography; and scriptural criticism. Mee highlights writers he says are often erroneously ignored as relevant influences, including John Toland, Joseph Priestly, Thomas Spence, and Thomas Paine. Giving particular attention to how Blake's forms, plots, and figures frequently assemble at a single conjecture of different discourses, particularly those of a religious nature, Mee attempts to delineate complex patterns of connections between works such as America, Europe, The Book of Urizen, and The Book of Ahania.

Entered by Elisa on 19 July 2004 at 1:17 AM.