{"product_id":"william-blake-and-the-myth-of-america-from-the-abolitionists-to-the-counterculture-9780198813279","title":"William Blake and the Myth of America: From the Abolitionists to the Counterculture","description":"This volume tells the story of William Blake's literary reception in America and suggests that ideas about Blake's poetry and personality helped shape mythopoeic visions of America from the Abolitionists to the counterculture. It links high and low culture and covers poetry, music, theology, and the novel. American writers have turned to Blake to rediscover the symbolic meaning of their country in times of cataclysmic change, terror, and hope. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBlake entered American society when slavery was rife and civil war threatened the fragile experiment of democracy. He found his moment in the mid twentieth-century counterculture as left-wing Americans took refuge in the arts at a time of increasingly reactionary conservatism, vicious racism, pervasive sexism, dangerous nuclear competition, and an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, the fires of Orc raging against the systems of Urizen. Blake's America, as a symbol of cyclical hope and despair, influenced many Americans who saw themselves as continuing the task of prophecy and vision. Blakean forms of bardic song, aphorism, prophecy, and lament became particularly relevant to a literary tradition which centralised the relationship between aspiration and experience. His interrogations of power and privilege, freedom and form resonated with Americans who repeatedly wrestled with the deep ironies of new world symbolism and sought to renew a Whitmanesque ideal of democracy through\u003cbr\u003eaffection and openness towards alterity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Linda Freedman\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/19\/2018\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 288\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.15lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.60h x 5.70w x 0.80d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780198813279\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLinda Freedman, \u003cem\u003eLecturer in English and American Literature, University College London\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLinda Freedman is a Lecturer in English and American literature at University College London. She is the author of \u003cem\u003eEmily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination\u003c\/em\u003e (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and has published widely on nineteenth and twentieth century literature. Her work explores the relationship between literature, theology, and the visual arts; transatlantic connections; and the afterlife of Romanticism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press, USA","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":40923077902451,"sku":"9.7802E+12","price":177.45,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/products\/img_088d95d9-720d-4fde-b291-d732b52d4540.jpg?v=1692103495","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/products\/william-blake-and-the-myth-of-america-from-the-abolitionists-to-the-counterculture-9780198813279","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}