Abstract

In this breakthrough study, William Richey examines the mind of one of the most ambitious poet-thinkers of the Romantic era. Offering a new and stimulating survey that shows William Blake's aesthetic thought moving through "a sequence of sharp and sudden ruptures", Blake's Altering Aesthetic argues that Blake's aesthetic theory and practice were far more rooted in the specific circumstances of their historical moment than has generally been recognized. Focusing on Blake's shifting attitudes toward the classical and the Gothic, Richey approaches the poet from a fresh angle, claiming that no single aesthetic philosophy applies uniformly throughout Blake's career. Rather, the Blake that Richey traces is a highly self-critical individual who is constantly repudiating his once deeply held convictions and inverting his former positions. Thus, instead of seeing Blake's later anticlassicism as a natural or inevitable outgrowth of his youthful beliefs, Richey argues convincingly that the changes in his theory and practice derived from specific social, political, and biographical conditions that caused his thinking to veer in unpredictable and often surprising directions.