University of Toronto Quarterly 

Volume 80, Number 4, Fall  2011 is now available at 

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/v823p2470x44/

 

William Blake Special Issue

The papers in this special issue of the University of Toronto Quarterly grew
out of a series of interrelated investigations of the ‘Composite Art’1 of
William Blake: a festschrift, a symposium, an exhibition, and an exhibition
catalogue, each of which was published in 2010. … I think we can predict
that The William Blake Project, of which this special issue of the
University of Toronto Quarterly is installment number five, will continue in
Toronto. The growth of the Bentley Blake collection and its contiguity with
the papers of Northrop Frye and of Samuel Taylor Coleridge provide a rich
context for the study of Romanticism, literary theory, and history of the
book. William Blake is indeed alive and well in Toronto. (excerpts from The
William Blake Project, Karen Mulhallen)

This issue contains: 

 

The William Blake Project

Karen Mulhallen 

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/8736501205633p10/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/8736501205633p10/?p=72dae019f3c14d
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DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.779

 

William Blake's Milton/A Poem and the Miltonic Matrix of 1791–1810

Morton D. Paley            

From the time when ‘Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face,’
William Blake felt a special relationship with John Milton. He would
therefore have felt a great interest in the extraordinary spate of
publishing and pictorial activity (sometimes both together) that occurred in
the last decade of the eighteenth century and the early years of the
nineteenth. He was, indeed, mentioned as a participant in two major Milton
projects planned during this period, but neither materialized. His own
Milton/A Poem, completed c. 1811, addresses two major subjects of previous
discussion: Milton's political commitment and his relations with the women
in his life. Characteristically, Blake does not adopt any prior positions,
but renders his own views, which are different from any of them.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h01681650g0716n7/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.786

 

Blake and the Banknote Crises of 1797, 1800, and 1818

Mark Crosby     

On 5 April 1797, Blake signed a certificate attesting to the efficacy of
Alexander Tilloch's method for producing forge-proof banknotes. Tilloch's
scheme was designed to obviate the human cost of forgery, which was a
capital offence. Predicated on a stereotype printing process, Tilloch's
method was technically and conceptually analogous to Blake's experiments in
illuminated printing. While motivated by different political, economic, and
aesthetic ideals, both men used experimental engraving/etching technologies
to challenge systemic repression. This essay examines an overlooked context
for Blake's poetic responses to repression, documents a previously
unrecorded manuscript certificate dated 5 April 1797 containing Blake's
signature, as well as two hitherto unrecorded instances of Blake's name
being published in connection with Tilloch's 1797 scheme, and suggests
another context for the ‘black net’ that Blake describes smothering London
in 1800. The trial records show that those convicted of banknote forgery had
access to engraving equipment. As an engraver with a copperplate rolling
press, Blake would have come under suspicion when large quantities of
counterfeit notes were discovered in 1797, 1800, and 1818.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/2008387071nr4383/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.815

            

‘In the Mouth of a True Orator’ (Jerusalem's Operating Instructions)

Susanne Sklar   

Blake declares that every word of Jerusalem has been chosen to suit ‘the
mouth of a true Orator.’ Though it is not written in the form of a play, the
poem has been designed to be read aloud and heard. When I try to be a ‘true
Orator,’ the poem's peculiar language, characters, and structure become
clearer, and its complexities less baffling. This article discusses why oral
interpretation is appropriate to the ‘Sublime Allegory’ Blake has created,
and how oral interpretation delivers us from misinterpretations of the
poem's eponymous heroine. Giving voice to the poem opens up the
possibilities for historical antecedents for the character in the poem
called Hand, and supports G.E. Bentley, Jr's recent observations about the
dating of the poem.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h2r13n3447547387/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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<http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/h2r13n3447547387/?p=72dae019f3c14d
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DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.837

            

‘humble but respectable’: Recovering the Neighbourhood Surrounding William
and Catherine Blake's Last Residence, No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand, c.
1820–27

Angus Whitehead          

In this paper, drawing upon a wide range of unpublished archival sources, I
present a detailed reconstruction of Fountain Court and its residents,
William and Catherine Blake during the period William and Catherine Blake
were resident at No. 3 Fountain Court (c. 1820–27). The paper presents
important new information concerning the society and milieu in Fountain
Court and its neighbourhood during 1820–27. This fresh archival evidence
enables us to identify and precisely locate for the first time the 'humble
but respectable' fellow lodgers and neighbours living in Fountain Court
during William and Catherine Blake's period of residence, and provides a
detailed picture of life in the Blakes' neighbourhood during this period,
and of trades conducted in the court, as well as the close familial and
social relationships existing between a number of households immediately
surrounding the Blakes' residence. Such relationships provide a context for
William and Catherine's own relationships with their brother-in-law and
landlord at 3 Fountain Court, Henry Banes and his wife Sarah Banes (née
Boucher) and two of their neighbours and fellow lodgers in the court, the
carver and gilder John George Lohr, and Blake's employer and fellow artist
John Barrow. The Blakes' last residence was not in a sleepy, forgotten
backwater, as some contemporary accounts and later biographers appear to
suggest. As my paper demonstrates, Fountain Court in the 1820s, leading
directly off the Strand, a major commercial thoroughfare of the largest
metropolis of the period, was comprised of a small community, thriving with
social and commercial activity. The reconstruction provides a detailed
immediate context in which to view afresh William and Catherine's years
living and working in Fountain Court.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/103536ph4526m372/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.858

 

Remember Me! Customs and Costumes of Blake's Gift Book

G.E. Bentley, Jr 

The gift book Remember Me! with Blake's wonderful engraving of the ‘Hiding
of Moses’ was more remarkable for its decorations than for its literary
contents. Of the twenty-four copies recorded, each differs from the others
in the pattern of binding, colour of fore-edges, endpapers, and the
decorated sleeve-case. Despite this varied elegance, the work had only a
modest sale, and the same sheets were re-issued in 1825 for the 1826
gift-giving season. This paucity of sales may be related to the fact that
the publisher John Poole had little experience of book distribution. His
speciality was as a maker of Marble Paper and Fancy Pocket-Books, not in
selling them.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/8h50846262x77357/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.880

            

‘Catalogue of Some of Blake's Pictures at “The Salterns”’: Captain Butts as
Exhibitor, Litigator, and Co-Heir (With His Sister Blanche)

Mary Lynn Johnson       

Beginning in 1863, to a greater extent than has been recognized, Captain
Frederick John Butts (1833–1905) controlled the lion's share of the largest
Blake collection ever assembled, works that his grandfather, Thomas Butts
(1739–1845), had commissioned or purchased from Blake himself. A proposed
redating of a visit from William Michael Rossetti, an examination of
previously unreported court records, and an analysis of newly accessible
papers of Mary Butts in the Beinecke Library – including a list of at least
‘some’ of Blake's works in the Captain's home – help clarify the division of
property between the siblings and offer a fresh perspective on the Captain's
actions and likely motives as preserver, manager, and guardian of his and
his sister's heritage.

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/9682w7436583m7q0/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.893

 

‘Without Contraries There is No Progression’: Cinematic Montage and the
Relationship of Illustration to Text in William Blake's The [First] Book of
Urizen1

Garry Leonard   

My claim is that Blake's illustrations are not a supplement depicting what
happens in the text, but a translation into visual terms of his central
tenet, at play throughout The [First] Book of Urizen, that ‘[w]ithout
Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy,
Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence’ (The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, Plate 3). And I am claiming further that this strategy is comparable
to the cinematic technique of montage: whereas the collision of two contrary
images in montage creates an explosion famously described by Benjamin as
‘the dynamite of the tenth of a second’. Blake, too, creates tension and
‘collision’ in his illustrations in order to depict not the actual image of
Los delivering his hammer blows, for example, but rather the hoped for
effect of these blows – the breaking apart of Urizen's ‘solid without
fluctuation’ (The [First] Book of Urizen, Plate 4). This ‘solid,’ if allowed
to stand, imposes a restrictive view of the cosmos that reduces our
visionary capacity to that of ‘two little orbs…fixed in two little
caves/Hiding carefully from the wind…’ (The [First] Book of Urizen, Plate
12).

http://utpjournals.metapress.com/content/q76222gr476h25pm/?p=72dae019f3c14df
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fbaa0bd98b9d1957de&pi=7> &pi=7

DOI: 10.3138/utq.80.4.918

___________________________________

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