William Blake and the Body

This volume re-evaluates Blake's central image: the human form. In Blake's designs, transparent skinned bodies passionately contort in his verse, metamorphic bodies burst from each other in gory, gender-bending births. The culmination is an ideal body uniting form and freedom. Connolly explores romantic era contexts like anatomical art, embryology, miscarriage and 20th century theorists like those of Kristeva, Douglas and Girard to provide an innovative analysis of Blake's transformations of body and identity.