Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Ill, 11/18/1993
EAN 9780521225151, ISBN10: 0521225159
Hardcover, 284 pages, 21.6 x 14 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
E. P. Thompson's long-awaited book on William Blake was published shortly after the historian's death in August 1993. Acclaimed as one of his best and most deeply felt works, it appears now for the first time in paperback. Written with a vivid passion, and bearing the marks of Thompson's lifelong struggle against authoritarian and anti-humanitarian politics both at the level of the individual and of the state, Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law is a profound enquiry into the structure of Blake's thought and the character of his sensibility. Its qualities are among those which place Thompson himself in the same tradition of dissenting values and non-conforming radicalism represented by Blake some two hundred years earlier.
Foreword Christopher Hill
Introduction
Part I. Inheritance
1. Works or faith?
2. Antinomianisms
3. The 'Ranting' impulse
4. The polite witness
5. Radical dissent
6. A peculiar people
7. Anti-hegemony
Appendix 1. The Muggletonian archive
Appendix 2. William Blake's mother
Part II. Human Images
Introduction
8. The new Jerusalem Church
9. 'The Divine Image'
10. From innocence to experience
11. 'London'
12. 'The Human Abstract'
13. Conclusion.