William Blake and the Body re-evaluates Blake's central image: the human form. In Blake's designs, transparent-skinned bodies passionately contort; in his verse, metamorphic bodies burst from each other in gory, gender-bending births. The culmination is an ideal body uniting form and freedom. Connolly explores romantic-era contexts like anatomical art, embryology, miscarriage and twentieth-century theorists like those of Kristeva, Douglas, Girard to provide an innovative new analysis of Blake's transformations of body and identity.
List of Plates Preface Abbreviations Textual Bodies Graphic Bodies Embodiment: Urizen Embodiment: Reuben Division and Cominglings: Emanations and Spectres Divisions and Cominglings: Sons and Daughters The Eternal Body Notes Bibliography Index