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HISTORICIZING BLAKE
A conference will be held 5-7 September 1990, at St. Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, England on “Historicizing Blake.” Of the romantic authors, Blake would seem to offer the most to studies from an historicist or Marxist perspective: an artisan who “labourd at the Mill with Slaves.” However, the dominant critical methodology has been the strong formalism of North America with its emphasis on archetypal patterns, transcendental poetics, and “literary” history. The focus of the conference will be the question of whether these theoretically-oriented approaches, which have dominated the field for the past twenty years, have now been displaced by renovated forms of historicist study. However, this is not meant to be in any way exclusive or inflexible and offers of papers on related areas of the romantic period will be gratefully considered. Scholars in the disciplines of history, literature, and art are invited to suggest ways of aligning and assessing Blake in relation to recent developments in cultural and materialist studies. “Historicizing Blake” particularly invites contributions from younger scholars. The conference hopes to support the attendance of a very few younger scholars by paying full or part fees, and applications to the begin page 214 | ↑ back to top organizers are cordially invited. Key speakers include John Beer, Marilyn Butler, David V. Erdman, Iain McCalman and E. P. Thompson. The conference will take place at St. Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill, which is Horace Walpole’s Gothic villa. Some lecture sessions will take place in Lady Waldegrave’s equally remarkable nineteenth-century additions to the Walpole house. Residential accommodation with full board is £85. Synopses of papers for the conference should be sent before 30 March 1990 to either Steve Clark, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, Mile End Road, London, or David Worrall, St. Mary’s College, Waldegrave Road, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, TW1 4SX.