Book Description

Readers of William Blake have long known of his dislike of Bacon, Newton, & Locke-his "unholy trinity" of thinkers who, as much as anyone in England, have come to symbolize the Enlightenment. In William Blake in a Newtonian World, Stuart Peterfreund assesses Blake's relationship with various currents of the counter- Enlightenment, including religious radicalism, Freemasonry, & the growing political power of essentially self-educated radical artisans. After two decades in which cultural historians have demonstrated that Enlightenment thinkers brought to their scientific pursuits a fair amount of cultural baggage, that era no longer seems the unquestioned exaltation of logic & rationality over superstition that it once did. Moreover, the outlines of a counter-Enlightenment tradition have begun to emerge, a tradition attacking the proposition that observation can be value-free & criticizing the cultural subtexts of a science based on such reasoning. In this thought-provoking volume, Peterfreund examines Blake's struggle against Newtonianism & its discontents as played out in both his lyric & his prophetic poetry. VOLUME 2 OF THE OKLAHOMA PROJECT FOR DISCOURSE & THEORY, SERIES FOR SCIENCE & CULTURE. STUART PETERFREUND is Professor & Chair of English at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. From 1995 to 1997 he served as president of the Society for Literature & Science, & he has held fellowships in History of Science at MIT & Harvard. "William Blake in a Newtonian World is a major contribution to Blake studies & to the discussion of science & literature in the Romantic period."--DAVID STEWART, Department of English, West Virginia University.