Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law

by E. P. Thompson , Foreword by Christopher Hill

• ISBN13: 9780521225151
• ISBN10: 0521225159
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-11-01
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

E. P. Thompson's long-awaited book on William Blake was published shortly after the historian's death in August 1993. Acclaimed as one of his best and most deeply felt works, it appears now for the first time in paperback. Written with a vivid passion, and bearing the marks of Thompson's lifelong struggle against authoritarian and anti-humanitarian politics both at the level of the individual and of the state, Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law is a profound enquiry into the structure of Blake's thought and the character of his sensibility. Its qualities are among those which place Thompson himself in the same tradition of dissenting values and non-conforming radicalism represented by Blake some two hundred years earlier.

Table of Contents

Foreword Christopher Hill

Introduction

Part I. Inheritance: 1. Works or faith?

2. Antinomianisms

3. The 'Ranting' impulse

4. The polite witness

5. Radical dissent

6. A peculiar people

7. Anti-hegemony

Appendix 1. The Muggletonian archive

Appendix 2. William Blake's mother

Part II. Human Images: Introduction

8. The new Jerusalem Church

9. 'The Divine Image'

10. From innocence to experience

11. 'London'

12. 'The Human Abstract'

13. Conclusion.