Blake and Homosexuality
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.45 (961 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0312234511 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 249 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-03-28 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Major breakthrough in Blake studies Modern scholarship has established that sexuality plays a vital role in the imaginative universe of William Blake, not simply for its own sake, but as a mordant vehicle for critiquing psychic and social realities. In this connection, it is generally assumed that Blake adhered to a conventional heterosexist view, namely that the male-female
"In this careful and important study, Hobson argues that the critical record has distorted Blake's treatment of homosexuality" - Judith C. Mueller, Eighteenth-Century Studies"Hobson works thoroughly and logically to introduce a complex and important set of new meanings into both fields of British Romanticism and Blake studies." --The Wordsworth Circle
In the process, Blake rejected the antihomosexual bias of British radical tradition, revised his idealization of aggressive male heterosexuality and his male-centered view of gender, and refined his conception of the cooperative commonwealth.. Against the backdrop of Britain's underground 18th and early-19th century homosexual culture, mob persecutions, and executions of homosexuals, Hobson shows how Blake's hatred of sexual and religious hypocrisy and state repression, and his revolutionary social vision, led him gradually to accept homosexuality as an integral part of human sexuality
HOBSON is Assistant Professor of English Language Studies at the State University of New York, USA. CHRISTOPHER Z.