William Blake's Gothic imagination

Scholars of the Gothic have long recognised Blake's affinity with the genre. Yet to date no major scholarly study focused on Blake's intersection with the Gothic exists. <i>William Blake's gothic imagination</i> seeks to redress this disconnect. The papers here do not simply identify Blake's Gothic conventions but thanks to recent scholarship on affect psychology and embodiment in Gothic studies reach deeper into the tissue of anxieties that take confused form through this notoriously nebulous historical aesthetic and narrative mode. The collection opens with papers touching on literary form history lineation and narrative in Blake's work establishing contact with major topics in Gothic studies. Then refines its focus to Blake's bloody nervous bodies through which he explores various kinds of Gothic horror related to reproduction anatomy sexuality affect and materiality. Rather than transcendent images this collection attends to Blake's 'dark visions of torment'.