Syllabus 2010-2011


[SYLLABUS TO BE UPDATED FOR 2012-2013]


Autumn

1. Letters (1800-1803)

Jonathan Roberts, ‘St Paul’s Gifts to Blake’s Aesthetic: “O Human Imagination, O Divine Body”’ (2003)

3. Illustrations to the Bible (1780-1824)
Christopher Rowland, ‘Blake and the Bible: Biblical Exegesis in the Work of William Blake’ (2005)

4. Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794)
Chuang Tzu, Wandering on the Way (4th-century BCE), trans. Victor Mair

5. ‘The Book of Urizen’ (1794)
Allen Ginsberg, 'Kral Majales' (1965); ‘Linear Notes on Blake Record’ (1969); ‘Your Reason and Blake’s System’ (1978-88)

6. Reading week

7. ‘Milton: a Poem in 2 Books’ (1804)
Suttas (selected 5th-century BCE discourses of the Buddha), trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi

8. ‘Illustrations of the Book of Job’ (1805; 1826)
Carl Jung, Answer to Job (1952)

9. ‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’ (1810); ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ (1826)
Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell

Anne Mellor, ‘The Human Form Divine and the structure of Blake’s Jerusalem’ (1971)


Spring

1. ‘The Old Cumberland Beggar’ (1798)
David Bromwich, Disowned by Memory (1998)

2. ‘The Ruined Cottage’ (1798); ‘The Discharged Soldier’ (1798)
C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960)

3. Lyrical Ballads (1798): 'Preface' (1800), ‘The Thorn’, ‘The Last of the Flock’, ‘The Idiot Boy’, ‘Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey’
Rumi, 'Be Melting Snow', 'A Babbling Child', 'Birdwings', 'The Lame Goat', 'The Grasses' (13th century), trans. Coleman Barks

4. ‘Strange fits of passion I have known’; ‘She dwelt among th’untrodden ways’; ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’; ‘Lucy Gray’
Geoffrey Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry: 1787-1814 (1964)

5. ‘There was a Boy’ (1798); ‘The Danish Boy’ (1799)
Martin Heidegger, 'The Thinker as Poet' (1947); Tim Burton, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy And Other Stories (1997)

6. Reading week

7. ‘Michael’ (1800); ‘The Brothers’ (1800)
W. S. Merwin, 'Fox Sleep,' 'Gate', 'Passing', 'The Bird'

8. Poems in Two Volumes (1807): ‘The Solitary Reaper’; ‘The Sailor’s Mother’
J. H. Prynne, Field Notes (2007)

9. The Prelude (1805): Book I, 1-54, 351-371, 428-473; Book IV, 400-504; Book V, 49-165; Book VI, 488-572; Book VII, 624-741; Book VIII, 222-311; Book XI, 258-389; Book XII, 145-219; Book XIII, 1-165
Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Straining so hard against the strength of night', 'Overflowing heavens of lavished stars', 'The Vast Night', 'Again and again, however we know the landscape of love', trans. Stephen Mitchell

10. Essays on Epitaphs (1810); ‘Old Man Travelling’ (1798); ‘The Sparrow’s Nest’ (1801); ‘Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle’ (1806); ‘Surprised by Joy’ (1815)

Eve

William Blake, The Creation of Eve (1808)