Searing Apparent Surfaces
Infernal Females in Four Early
Works of William Blake
Stockholm Studies in English No. XC

By Dee Drake
February 2000
Almgvist & Wiksell
Distributed by
ISBN: 9122018565                                                                  
178 pages, 6 3/4 x 9 1/2"
$52.50 Paper Original

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From the Abstract:

"This study explores the quality of the infernal as a specifically female expression of desire in the works of William Blake.The contention is that the infernal constitutes an essential female element of the divine in Blake's early work but is demonized in the late work as an attribute of the Female Will...

...Most Blake critics focus primarily on the poems. I privelege the designs as a deliberate strategy of overcompensation for this literary bias...I propose degrees of female desire on an infernal scale (the less restrained the desire, the more infernal the female) which are then examined in readings of The Book of Thel, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and the color print Hecate..."

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