This critical examination demonstrates how William Blake's techniques of symbolic juxtaposition work in both language and illustration of convey his poetic meaning. Tracing the development of the poet's technique from the earlier to the later works, the author places the often obscure Lambeth Prophecies in their stylistic context and renders them highly accessible.

The infernal topographies of the title are more psychological than geographical, though physical travel and the infusing of the past into the present are also at issue. Driven in part by the anxieties of time and mortality that have always been at the root of lyric, these poems are also shaped by the pressure of the likely collapse of the current social order, and by impending and current extinctions. Weaving the domestic, the oneiric and the outside worlds, these are poems that try to find a place from which to speak and think when so much seems to be ending.

Although the concept of the performative has influenced literary theory in numerous ways, this book represents one of the first full-length studies of performative language in literary texts. Creating States examines the visionary poetry of John Milton and William Blake, using a critical approach based on principles of speech-act theory as articulated by J.L. Austin, John Searle, and Emile Benveniste. Angela Esterhammer proposes a new way of understanding the relationship between these two poets, while at the same time evaluating the role of speech-act philosophy in the reading of visionary poetry and Romantic literature. Esterhammer distinguishes between the 'sociopolitical performative,' the speech act which is defined by a societal context and derives power from institutional authority, and the `phenomenological performative,' language which is invested with the power to posit or create because of the individual will and consciousness of the speaker. Analysing texts such as The Reason of Church-Government, Paradise Lost, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem, Esterhammer traces the parallel evolution of Milton and Blake from writers of political and anti-prelatical tracts to poets who, having failed in their attempts to alter historical circumstances through a direct address to their contemporaries, reaffirm their faith in individual visionary consciousness and the creative word – while continuing to use the forms of a socially or politically performative language.

Examines Blake's place within a bourgeois culture in the process of redefining the role and meaning of sexuality.

This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essay focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.

Verse Infernal is a collection of poems inspired by the life and work of Anton LaVey, the Church of Satan, and the Satanic religion. Edited by Ronald J. Murray and Ruth Waytz.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1998.