WILLIAM BLAKE: A New Kind of Man

by Michael Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1977

As a boy, William Blake saw visions--angels in the trees, things like that. But unlike most boys who see such things, Blake's visionary powers never left him. Michael Davis sets this peculiarity at the center of Blake's life and art. Blake was, Davis says, ""a man dedicated to giving bodily form to spiritual beings,"" and he achieved this through poetry, engravings, and paintings devoted to Biblical themes and his own mythology of Orc, Urizen, Los, Albion, and others, who represent passion, reason, imagination, mankind, and so forth. Davis also knits Blake's works together with other influences in his life--relations with friends (Fuseli, Flaxman) and enemies (Reynolds), economic struggles, the profession of engraver, empathy for the poor, political revolution, and radical politics. But, notwithstanding his arresting subtitle, Davis is more interested in the works than the man; hence his narrative of Blake's Life concerns mainly the sequence and circumstances of Blake's literary and artistic career, and includes extensive quotations from letters, as well as helpful explications of Blake's most obscure visionary poetry. This chronology of events and achievements makes for a convenient biographical introduction to Blake, but not a biography to supersede those by Alexander Gilchrist, Mona Wilson, and Thomas Wright. One can only wish that besides the critical comments, good illustrations, and narrative detail, Davis had put more of something else into his book: life.

Pub Date: July 11, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Univ. of California Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1977

Categories: NONFICTION