------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 56 Today's Topics: BLAKE AND POLITICS -- BOOK QUERY Re: discipleship of Blakeans: US vs. UK Blake's Muddles and Callings Strait and Crooked Roads, Take 2 Re: discipleship of Blakeans: US vs. UK Re: Who made the Lamb? Tyger? Re: Who made the Lamb? Tyger? Morton, Mee, and Co. help me out Research Paper Albion is sick! America faints! William Blake INFO 4 HS research paper Re: Morton, Mee, and Co. Blake in the Movies Re: self-annihilation Re: Morton, Mee, and Co. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 May 96 18:33 EDT From: "Elisa E. Beshero 814 862-8914" To: blake@albion.com Subject: BLAKE AND POLITICS -- BOOK QUERY Message-Id: <9605222236.AA04446@uu6.psi.com> Jon Mee's _Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790's_ (Oxford, 1992) is a terrific read even if you don't need it for your research (which I do). Mee looks at Blake's work as a part of popular religious and political movements of the 1790's and sees parallels between his work and, for example, popular songs/ballads by Thomas Spence and the manifold writings condemning the Anglican church of the late 18th century and promoting millenialist fervor among the working/artisan classes--true prophecy vs. corrupt religion. The index is full of names of rabble rousers and late 18th- century malcontents like Joseph Priestley, Thomas Paine, James Relly, George Whitefield, etc. Mee sees a connection between religious movements and political radicalism during the period, claims that Blake most likely intended for his 1790s work to be published, and moreover does not think that Blake's ideas changed much after the turn of the 19th century. He manages, I think, to assert Blake's political rhetoricality without offering a reading of his work: As Mee states in his introduction "Blake the Bricoleur," "In this book I want to argue that the radicalism of Blake's rhetoric in the 1790s is much more fundamental than is often recognized. His work can be shown to be steeped in political significances and to gain an extra dimension in the context of the controversy over the French Revolution. All this is not just a matter of references to contemporary events. Radical discourse is often operative in what may seem the most unlikely places and informs Blake's language at almost every level."(1) My verdict: This book is very _useful_, because it's packed with parallels btw Blake and a host of his contemporaries. It makes a convincing case--and almost stole my thunder when I was working on a paper on Blake, Paine, and milleniarian movements last semester. If you're working at all with contextualizing Blake historically, read Mee before you start writing! --My 2 cents dashed off in about 10 minutes. . . Elisa - - The original note follows - - Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 15:50:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: BLAKE AND POLITICS -- BOOK QUERY Resent-From: blake@albion.com Reply-To: blake@albion.com Having just received the "Literary Studies" catalog from Oxford University Press, I was aroused by the following item: Mee, Jon. DANGEROUS ENTHUSIASM: WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE CULTURE OF RADICALISM IN THE 1790S. Oxford University Press, 1994. 280 pp. paper $17.60 (sale price). It looks like I may need this book for my researches, though I have not heard of it before. Anybody here read it? Any comments? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 20:03:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: discipleship of Blakeans: US vs. UK Message-Id: <199605230303.UAA00957@igc2.igc.apc.org> Very good, but as for knee-jerk marxists, I wonder whom you have in mind. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 07:53:36 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake's Muddles and Callings Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think Kevin Lewis has some good points, but Blake's muddle isn't all based on his "wrong" social class, as indeed D.H. Lawrence found a little over a century afterwards to be a hindrance in being accepted by... who? Creeps, in my opinion, with narrow visions. Blake's writing is a muddle, because... I believe Blake was a "special" person. If his writing seems complex, contradictory, and sometimes ending in confusion instead of clarification, it's not his social class that is doing that. In my opinion, he was reaching for enigmas that simply couldn't be explained, knots that couldn't be untied (except, perhaps, by the Apocalypse); thus, someone like Kenneth Clark gets frustrated by his writing, while I get endlessly fascinated, instead. D.H. Lawrence, on the other hand, came from "the wrong side of the coal mines", but when you read his poetry it's usually quite clear what he's saying. He therefore gets broadsided with different kinds of insults from upper-class/Bloomsbury people like T.S. Eliot. I bring up the comparison to show how Blake's work, and problems approaching the work, is more complex than just class division. I now address a this key, good point that Lewis makes: >Blake could not speak the language correctly, came from shopkeepers, and >possesses a genius unamenable to the conventional rational-empirical >approaches of the English educational system.>>> This last point, to me, has nothing to do with the first two points. Although he maybe couldn't "speak correctly..." and "came from shopkeepers", he was friends with Thomas Paine, who had a very clear rational-empirical mind. Even Wollstonecraft, whose writing has plenty of romantic fervor, also had a rational-empirical side to her as she argued for the rights of women. What's happening with Blake? As a very good WebSite by Edward Friedlander says: (http://worldmall.com/erf/blake/blakemil.txt) "Shifts (in _Milton_) in perspective are bewilderingly rapid, and Blake has complicated it all by adding supplementary pages within the text." Or what do you think of this letter to Thomas Butts, which I also found at Friedlander's WebSite: "I am not ashamed afraid or averse to tell You what Ought to be Told. That I am under the direction of Messengers from Heaven Daily & Nightly but the nature of such things is not as some suppose. without trouble or care. Temptations are on the right hand & left behind the sea of time & space roars & follows swiftly he who keeps not right onward is lost & if our footsteps slide in clay how can we do otherwise than fear & tremble. but I should not have troubled You with this account of my spiritual state unless it had been necessary in explaining the actual cause of my uneasiness into which you are so kind as to Enquire for I never obtrude such things on others unless questiond & then I never disguise the truth...." --Blake to Thomas Butts, Jan. 10, 1802 You know, I've often wondered why Van Gogh drew the way he drew. As time passed, he found his vision and just developed it further and further. What I've seen in evolution with Blake... and I don't profess to be a Blake scholar, just a Blake fan... is from the attempt to embrace Paine-like Enlightenment ideas in poems like "All Religions Are One" and "There is No Natural Religion" to attempts of creating his own mythologies, under the guise of a sort of "Child's Garden of Verses" (or are they "Hymns from Hell"?) with _Songs of Innocence and Experience_, moving to what I consider to be (at least at this point in my life) his masterpiece, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". But why did Blake no longer include "The Marriage" as part of his repertoire later in life? My own thesis, at least at this point, is that he had a spiritual revelation around this 1800-02 period, which pulled him back into the Heaven side of seeing things... in his own peculiarly designed Christian way, which gave him peace amidst the wreckage of the Revolution and more... (Have any of you heard the quote that during the last dozen or so years of his life, his wife said something to the effect that she never saw him much because he was in Heaven all the time?)... and got spooked out not only by the revolutionary tone of "Marriage" but by the fact that he'd had such a great time in Hell. This was partly what I was hinting at, just looking at his visual art progression from a Michelangelo-like boldness of Renaissance style and then retreating back into a Siena-like twinkly other-worldliness. We also should consider that his few patron(s) wanted, specifically, the religious stuff. So there was this commercial demand on him abandonning revolutionary/atheistic like stuff... but I think it coincided with what he honestly FELT... because Blake shows himself over and over again to be very stubborn in what he thinks is RIGHT or GENIUS or... And lastly, you have to consider that Blake was probably not kidding as much as people may think when he was demanded by... who? a devil from Hell? not to print Paine's work at one point... and other voices that he heard. Friedlander addresses this well, from an academic-paper approach (as well as being a medical doctor) in his WebSite. It's something I've felt about Blake for a long time. Blake created what Blake could create. As times changed (and they were amazing, if frightening times), his art changed, too. But he was always William Blake. That he could not adapt to the needs of the "audience" is not just a sign of him being a "rebel artist par excellence", in my opinion. He was following his own path. -R.H. Albright http://world.std.com/~albright/blake.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 08:02:34 -0400 From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Strait and Crooked Roads, Take 2 Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius." --- from Plate 10, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by William Blake I'm not sure the crooked roads without improvement are the roads of Genius, but I think it's important to get off the beaten path sometimes. My view has the potential to be expanded, instead of merely reinforced, by seeing even familiar things from new angles. Sometimes I walk around a city with boring grids. Really, it's the tyranny of the grid. (New York Cit, midtown) Or I laugh at how the grids were superimposed on topography that was not considered... (San Francisco) Roads that wrapped around the hills would have been much better. And then I find myself in a street pattern carved out by serendipity... or what appears to be serendipity... like in a Frederick Law Olmsted park or like a meandering stream. Much better, here, I think... much better, indeed. -R.H. Albright ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 96 09:35:53 EDT From: Kevin Lewis To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: discipleship of Blakeans: US vs. UK Message-Id: <9605231337.AA24449@uu6.psi.com> Ralph, I cannot think of any off hand. I do not know any. Put this in the category of straw men. Or (Blakean) the Straw Man. Kevin Lewis ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 10:33:03 -0400 From: grayrobe@pilot.msu.edu (Robert M. Gray, Jr.) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Who made the Lamb? Tyger? Message-Id: <199605231433.KAA58507@pilot04.cl.msu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My original point about the child "making" the lamb silently stepped through both Jennifer's and Randall's points. If God/Jesus created the world/lamb, and God/Jesus resides in the human breast (which I read to mean something perhaps different than humans create(d) God, although I think it does lend a great deal of agency to humans in the creation (creative?) process), then the creation of the world/lamb/reality is an act of the human perceiver's mind/imagination. Yes, Blake "made" the lamb and tyger (as well as "The Lamb" and "The Tyger"), and yes, the reader makes them when s/he reads or remembers the poems, but in the construct of the poem, which is where, I believe, this discussion started (in the "conversation" between the child and the lamb), the child is a human agent within whose breast God resides, and within whose imagination/consciousness "reality" resides, so therefore, given the contentions of my earlier post, the person "speaking" in each poem is the maker. I could be off base here, as I admitted at the beginning of my earlier post, but no one has convinced me of that yet. I'll also admit that I'm not sure what this means; I just think it's an interesting circular thing going on here. Rob ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 11:58:06 -0400 From: cxh36@psu.edu (Chad Hayton) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Who made the Lamb? Tyger? Message-Id: <199605231556.PAA32534@r02n05.cac.psu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" All this discussion of God residing in the human breast all sounds very Gnostic to me (or at least similar to thier tenets). Are there any studies that connect Blake with Gnosticism? Chad Hayton Pennsylvania State University ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 18:40:37 MET From: "DOERRBECKER D.W." To: blake@albion.com Subject: Morton, Mee, and Co. Message-Id: May 23rd, 1996 In general, certainly agree with what Elisa Beshero writes concerning the many merits of Jon Mee's *Dangerous Enthusiasm*; I've learnt a lot from reading this book. If I have any misgivings about it (the hardback edition was published in 1992) at all, then it isn't the use of a little (and sometimes helpful) jargon from Levi-Strauss, but Jon Mee's occasionally cavalier approach to documentation in his footnotes. He *might* have indicated that others, including A. L. Morton (with his interest in the survival of the `enthusiastic' ideas of the Ranters and Levellers), Morton D. Paley, or even Ronald Paulson, had previously asked some pertinent questions in his field of investigation and/or had argued along similar lines. Of course, Mee was well aware of this, and he cites the relevant publications of these scholars in his bibliography--it might have been helpful, though, if he had indicated more clearly just *where* he was making use of their findings. Yet these are mere quibbles :-(, and just as anybody else who has commented on the book before, I'd like to recommend it highly. Iain McCalman's book (mentioned by VP in a recent mailing) as well as *Historicizing Blake*, a collection of essays edited by Steve Clark and David Worrall (London: Macmillan; and New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1994) usefully supplement *Dangerous Enthusiasm*. The following is a list of the reviews of Mee's Book that I have seen over the past few years: Susan Matthews, *BARS Bulletin and Review* 5 (Nov. 1993): 16-17; Morton D. Paley, *Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly* 27 (1993-1994): 86-88; Robert Miles, *Notes and Queries* 239 ns 41 (1994): 109-110; Nelson Hilton, *Eighteenth-Century Studies* 27 (1993-1994): 519-525; Anne F. Janowitz, *Studies in Romanticism* 32 (1993 [i.e., Spring 1994]): 297-303; Rolf P. Lessenich, *Archiv fuer das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen* 230 (1993): 180-182; Philip Cox, *British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies* 17 (1994): 103-105; Brian Wilkie, *Modern Language Review* 89 (1994): 733-734; Francois Piquet, *Etudes Anglaises* 47 (1994): 339-340; [the late] E. P. Thompson, *London Review of Books* 16#2 (2 Jan. 1993): 12-13; Desiree Hirst, *Times Literary Supplement* (9 July 1993): 29; David Fuller, *Review of English Studies* ns 46 (1995): 280-281; Edwina Burness, *English Studies* 75 (1994): 282-283; and Jeremy Gregory, *Literature and History* 3rd ser. 4 (1995): 104-105. Enough. or Too Much? --DW Doerrbecker ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 14:21:21, -0500 From: VViseCrack@prodigy.com (MR PETER E LEDDY III) To: blake@albion.com Subject: help me out Message-Id: <199605231821.OAA23008@mime4.prodigy.com> Ok all of you you all seemed like the people to go to for advice. You all seem to know alot about Blake and thats what I need. I have to do a research paper on Blake and I chose to do his poem "The School Boy" from his collection Songs of Innocence. Well I was wondering if anyone had any criticism about this poem or if you could help me with the rhyme scheme or meter of the poem I have included this poem at the bottom of this page Please read this and tell me everything you can about this poem or about blake. Also could you tell me some places to get some good info on Blake (on the Web or off of it). Well here goes with blake's poem( it was one of his earlier poems writing in I love to rise in a summer morn When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the skylark sings with me. O! what sweet company! But to go to school on a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay. Ah! then at times I drooping sit, And spend many an anxious hour, Nor in my book can I take delight, Nor sit in learning's bower, Worn thro' with the dreary shower. How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? O! father and mother, if buds are nipped And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are stripped Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care's dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer's fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear? If you see any poetic devices or anything maybe like the back round of this poem or anything please tell. Well I guess this is one of the reasons you have a Blake chat groups so could you please help me out. I have to do a research paper in a week and im searching for as much info as possible. Peter Leddy ( VViseCrack) VViseCrack@prodigy.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 14:22:02, -0500 From: VViseCrack@prodigy.com (MR PETER E LEDDY III) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Research Paper Message-Id: <199605231822.OAA14078@mime4.prodigy.com> Oh all of you you all seemed like the people to go to for advice. You all seem to know alot about Blake and thats what I need. I have to do a research paper on Blake and I chose to do his poem "The School Boy" from his collection Songs of Innocence. Well I was wondering if anyone had any criticism about this poem or if you could help me with the rhyme scheme or meter of the poem I have included this poem at the bottom of this page Please read this and tell me everything you can about this poem or about blake. Also could you tell me some places to get some good info on Blake (on the Web or off of it). Well here goes with blake's poem( it was one of his earlier poems writing in I love to rise in a summer morn When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the skylark sings with me. O! what sweet company! But to go to school on a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay. Ah! then at times I drooping sit, And spend many an anxious hour, Nor in my book can I take delight, Nor sit in learning's bower, Worn thro' with the dreary shower. How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? O! father and mother, if buds are nipped And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are stripped Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care's dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer's fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear? If you see any poetic devices or anything maybe like the back round of this poem or anything please tell. Well I guess this is one of the reasons you have a Blake chat groups so could you please help me out. I have to do a research paper in a week and im searching for as much info as possible. Peter Leddy ( VViseCrack) VViseCrack@prodigy.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 14:34:54 -0400 (EDT) From: izak@igs.net (Izak Bouwer) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Albion is sick! America faints! Message-Id: <199605231834.OAA28374@host.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Solemn heave the Atlantic waves between the gloomy nations, The Second American War of Independence has begun. So far, thundering silence from across the sea. (Is it because they are fighting their own war of independence - stay free or become a colony of Europe?) Since the population of the U.S. is three to four times that of England, is it not to be expected that more second or third tier Blake scholarship would be published in the U.S.A. than in England? Are there more first tier Blake scholars in the U.S. than in England? (And please, Frye and Bentley are Canadians, and therefore cannot be counted.) And please, do not forget the Blake scholarship that is going on in other parts of the world. We know that they are active in Europe. In Japan Blake is apparently intensely studied. May I also remind you of the pioneering work in 1926 of D.J. SLOSS (Principal of University College, Rangoon, India) J.P.R. WALLIS (Transvaal University College, Pretoria, South Africa) Gloudina Bouwer ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 14:23:00, -0500 From: VViseCrack@prodigy.com (MR PETER E LEDDY III) To: blake@albion.com Subject: William Blake INFO 4 HS research paper Message-Id: <199605231823.OAA13930@mime4.prodigy.com> Ok all of you you all seemed like the people to go to for advice. You all seem to know alot about Blake and thats what I need. I have to do a research paper on Blake and I chose to do his poem "The School Boy" from his collection Songs of Innocence. Well I was wondering if anyone had any criticism about this poem or if you could help me with the rhyme scheme or meter of the poem I have included this poem at the bottom of this page Please read this and tell me everything you can about this poem or about blake. Also could you tell me some places to get some good info on Blake (on the Web or off of it). Well here goes with blake's poem( it was one of his earlier poems writing in I love to rise in a summer morn When the birds sing on every tree; The distant huntsman winds his horn, And the skylark sings with me. O! what sweet company! But to go to school on a summer morn, O! it drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, The little ones spend the day In sighing and dismay. Ah! then at times I drooping sit, And spend many an anxious hour, Nor in my book can I take delight, Nor sit in learning's bower, Worn thro' with the dreary shower. How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring? O! father and mother, if buds are nipped And blossoms blown away, And if the tender plants are stripped Of their joy in the springing day, By sorrow and care's dismay, How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer's fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear? If you see any poetic devices or anything maybe like the back round of this poem or anything please tell. Well I guess this is one of the reasons you have a Blake chat groups so could you please help me out. I have to do a research paper in a week and im searching for as much info as possible. Peter Leddy ( VViseCrack) VViseCrack@prodigy.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 10:45:08 +1000 From: jon.mee@anu.edu.au (Jon Mee) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Morton, Mee, and Co. Message-Id: <199605240045.KAA25223@anugpo.anu.edu.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Reviewers all! It's a bit odd watching yourself being discussed on the web, but I suppose I should admit I'm reading all this (at 33, my body hasn't withered yet). Just on the footnoes, publishers don't like too mnay nowadays and I tended to try to make it clear where I was directly engaging with a previous argument cf the acknoweldgement of Paley's work in Chap 2, n16, rather than showing where the entire priesthood had gone before me. I was also trying to show, for instance, that the links with Blake and mythography had specific ideological resonances in the radical culture of the 1790s which people like Ruthven Todd rather skated over, I felt, but perhaps it's true the notes to his work could have been fuller (of course the thesis on which the book draws drips with notes). As for Morton, he is a huge general influence on me, as is the whole tradition of British 'cultural' Marxism which for me, despite my interest in 'wicked' theory, remains where I come from. What I tried to show was that the influence that Morton traces in terms of echoes and parallels (Michael Ferber's work is relevant here too) was actually circulating in sermons and, perhaps most importantly, in actual republications of texts from the 1640s in the 1790s. This had not been documented before as far as I know.Anyway I fear I am probably incapable of living up to Detlef's high bibliographical standard, but I hope to be (with Morton and Thompson) more of a roundhead than a cavalier. As for Iain Mccalman's book. My own work was and continues to be deeply indebted to Iain. He is a marvellous historian and I would recommend anyone who is interested in the Romantic period to read his work. I think his next book will change perceptions of the whole period. If the original correspondent has to choose between buying Dangerous Enthusiasm and Radical Underworld, the latter would be the better long-term investment! How's that for self-annihilation! Jon Mee ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 12:04:12 -0900 From: Chris Eastwood To: blake@albion.com Subject: Blake in the Movies Message-Id: <2.2.16.19960524210412.41379d24@gollum.itc.gu.edu.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" HiYa all pardon me if this is a well hashed question ... but I was wundering if anyone out there is familiar with the misquotation of what I am sure is a bit of Blake in the olde classic Blade Runner. In one scene a character recites "Firey the angels fell deep thunder rolled around their shores burning with the fires of Orc" as he is entering a room (to intimidate and question a person) The piece is (I think) related to part of "Preludium to America" but I'm not sure ... Either way I am interested in the useage ofthe piece in the movie, and any signifigance that mis-quoting it may have. The Character is a "Slave" and is trying to gain "freedom" from his "owner" for himself and the woman that he loves. Considering that he is likely intending to kill the person he is questioning (and that he is given to irony) he rolls this off blithely as he appears and surprises the other fellow. I am wondering if he is feeling that this is a reversal of fate, and that he holds power over this "master". Reversing the reference of angels (from rose to fell) may have some meaning... no? Any thoughts would be appreciated Thanks fer yer time --- Chris Eastwood email c.eastwood@its.gu.edu.au Software Engineer phone (07) 3875 7599 ITS Griffith University Queensland AUSTRALIA ************************************************************************ 'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day, If your Snark be a Boojum! For then You will softly and suddenly vanish away, And never be met with again!' ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 10:57:53 MET From: "DOERRBECKER D.W." To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: self-annihilation Message-Id: <1BBE6C0DCD@netwareserver.uni-trier.de> May 24th, 1996 I'd like to add a *footnote* to what Jon Mee wrote earlier today (yesterday?) concerning his 1992 study of Blake and *Dangerous Enthusiasm*. He says: > Anyway I fear I am probably incapable of living up to Detlef's high > bibliographical standard, [...]. I don't quite believe that, and neither does Jon--after all, he allows that > the thesis on which the book draws drips with notes. Furthermore, what to me seems to be at stake isn't anybody's bibliographical standards, but rather the potential usefulness of notes. Jon, of course, is perfectly right when stating that these seem to have fallen from grace (even) in (academic) publishing houses. Personally, I think that's sad (and really cannot be accepted) For one thing, I like reading critical asides in scholarly notes because they `historicize' the process of reception / interpretation itself; for another, even a simple page reference as provided in a note may save a reader from having to start all over again, either with reading, or with actually `thinking through' some problem. Jon closed his communication by asking > How's that for self- annihilation! Well, I'd say that's just wonderful. or Enough. or Too Much? was self- annihilation called for?? Not by me. But I liked Jon's reply a lot (roundhead vs. cavalier, that's great!). --DW Doerrbecker ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 05:13:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph Dumain To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Morton, Mee, and Co. Message-Id: <199605241213.FAA26100@igc2.igc.apc.org> I appreciate all the feedback on Mee's DANGEROUS ENTHUSIASM, not least from Mr. Mee himself! >If the original correspondent has to choose beween buying >Dangerous Enthusiasm and Radical Underworld, the latter would be >the better long-term investment! Too late, I ordered your book on Wednesday. However, I know nothing about the other book. Perhaps you could give me some information on that one. I bought more Blake books in the used bookstores today. I will report later. -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #56 *************************************