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BLAKE AT MLA 1981
Anyone interested in participating in a proposed MLA Special Session (1981, New York) on “Blake and the Art of His Time” is invited to send a proposal to Stephen C. Behrendt, Dept. of English, University of Nebraska, 330 Andrews Hall, Lincoln, NE, 68588. Complete papers will have to arrive by 1 March 1981, but proposals, abstracts or drafts will be welcome at any time.
The idea for such a session is based on a sense that many Blakeans are still more immediately familiar with Blake’s poetry than with his pictures and their relation to an artistic tradition and milieu with which Blake had much more than just a nodding acquaintance. Therefore, the session’s tentative focus will be the manner in which Blake’s verbal and visual work reflects, employs, or comments upon the styles, techniques, and materials particularly of Blake’s contemporaries. Possible topics might include real or apparent “borrowings,” the relation of commercial book illustration to Blake’s work, and new assessments of Blake’s place within the art of his time.