Blake's Drama Theatre, Performance and Identity in the Illuminated Books

Blake's Drama explores the implications of taking the 'Visionary forms dramatic' of William Blake literally, providing an alternative perspective on the long-standing critical debate on the text-image dynamic in his works. It reinterprets his multimedia productions – poetry, painting and engraving – as dramas which provoke a spectatorship called on to act, and argues that the resulting depiction of identity is paradoxically both essential and constructed. By employing an interdisciplinary approach that brings medieval, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century, as well as modern discourses on theatre into dialogue with contemporary theory, this book situates these works in the performance and visual culture of their time. Doing so reveals the theatrical as well as linguistic performativity of Blake's verbal-visual art form, offering an unconventional picture of Blake as invested in drama, action, exteriority, and the body.

Diane Piccitto has been a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, for the past several years.

List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The Theatre of the Illuminated Books
2. Spectatorial Entrances: Where Brechtian Alienation Meets Medieval Presence 3. Staging Urizen: The Melodrama of Identity Formation
4. The Performativity of Inspiration: Action and Identity in Milton
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index