Spiritual History A Reading of William Blake's Vala or The Four Zoas

by Lincoln, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780198183143
• ISBN10: 0198183143
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-03-14
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

William Blake's The Four Zoas is one of the most challenging poems in the English language, and one of the most profound. It is also one of the least read of the major poetic narratives of the Romantic period. Spiritual History presents a much-needed introduction to the poem, but it will also be of great interest to those already familiar with it. The first full-length study to examine in detail Blake's numerous manuscript revisions of the poem, Spiritual History shows this much misunderstood poem to be the most extraordinary product of the eighteenth-century tradition of philosophical history.

Author Biography

Andrew Lincoln is Senior lecturer in English at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations
Note on Texts
Introduction
The Copperplate Text
A History of the Cosmos	p. 31
A Dream of Nine Nights
Breaking the Bounds of Destiny	p. 71
A Vision of Progress	p. 89
The Progress of Prophecy	p. 109
The Progress of Reason	p. 124
The Human Abstract	p. 142
The Progress of Empire	p. 161
The Last Judgement	p. 186
The Major Revisions
A Christian Vision	p. 223
Final Changes
Buried Beneath the Ruins	p. 283
Appendix 1 A Note on the Illustrations	p. 291
Appendix 2 Interim Revisions	p. 293
Appendix 3 The Gardens of Vala	p. 296
Appendix 4 Two Textual Problems	p. 297
Select Bibliography	p. 299
Index	p. 311
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