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begin page 224 | ↑ back to top“THE ETERNAL WHEELS OF INTELLECT”: DISSERTATIONS1↤ 1 The great majority of these dissertations are for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, but a few are for other degrees requiring work equivalent to some U.S. Ph.D.s: B.D. (Oxford), B. Litt. (Oxford), D. Litt. (Lucknow), M. Litt. (Cambridge, Lancaster), and M. Phil. (London). ON WILLIAM BLAKE
William Blake has been the subject of doctoral dissertations for over sixty years, and a sufficient number have been completed and accepted—over two hundred—to make it possible to draw some interesting conclusions about patterns of interest in William Blake and about patterns in higher education.*↤ This essay, written in the summer of 1977, has had to be patched and supplemented repeatedly as new dissertations and publications on Blake by their authors appeared. The facts and conclusions are generally up-to-date to about September 1978, but they are not as consistent as I should like them to be. In general, the conclusions which these facts make possible, at least to me, confirm what one might have guessed but supply the facts to justify one’s guesses.
Before one places much weight upon either the facts or the conclusions based upon them, however, one must recognize the fragmentary nature of our evidence and whence it comes. About 60% of those theses of which I have records are listed in Dissertation Abstracts (1938-1969) and Dissertation Abstracts International (1969 ff.); about 60% are in Blake Books (1977); each work is supplemented by the Comprehensive Dissertation Query Service of University Microfilms which includes many dissertations not in DA and DAI; and a number come from elsewhere.2↤ 2 a) Lawrence F. McNamee, Dissertations in English and American Literature: Theses Accepted by American, British and German Universities 1865-1964 (N.Y. & London, 1968); . . . Supplement One . . . 1964-1968 (1969); . . . Supplement Two: Theses Accepted by American, British, British Commonwealth and German Universities 1969-1973 (1974)—N.B. The spelling in the last two is very unreliable and the lacunae are legion. b) Retrospective Index to Theses of Great Britain and Ireland 1716-1950 Vol. I: Social Sciences and Humanities, ed. Roger R. Bilboul & Francis L. Kent (Oxford & Santa Barbara, 1975); Index to Theses Accepted for Higher Degrees in the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I for 1950-51 (London, 1953)—Vol. XXIV (1975) N.B. The titles are sometimes given somewhat approximately. c) Annuaire des Docteure (Lettres) de l’Université de Paris et des autres Universités françaises: Bibliographie analytique des Thèses (1899-1965) [n.p., n.d.]. d) Humanities: A Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations Accepted by Indian Universities 1857-1970 (New Delhi, 1975). No doctoral dissertations[e] on Blake have been found in directories of Australian, Austrian, European, French, French language, German, New Zealand, and South African universities, no doubt partly because some of the directories are not subject-indexed. No Blake dissertations at universities outside North America are listed in DA, DAI or the Query Service, and a number of universities in North America, such as Harvard and Chicago, apparently never or rarely list their dissertations in DA or DAI. For Blake dissertations at institutions such as these, or at those which occasionally do not list their dissertations there, or for dissertations (of which there are scores recorded here) listed in DA and DAI3↤ 3 The Comprehensive Dissertation Query Service, like the DAI index and other University Microfilms services, is organized by computer and does not distinguish the poet from Henry Robison Delany, BLAKE, or the Huts of America; Henry BLAKE Fuller (seven theses); The BLAKE Plateau, North Atlantic; Gastrotritch, Lepidodermella Squamatta (Dumardin) BLAKE; Galinsoga Ciliata (Raf.) (BLAKE) (a plant) (three theses); Gutierrezia Dracunculoides (DC) BLAKE; Artemesia Carruthii, Wood var. Wrightii (Gray) BLAKE (Carruth Sagebrush); Anna S. C. BLAKE Manual Training School; Edward BLAKE (Irish Nationalist); John BLAKE White (Southern Romantic painter and playwright). Naturally theses which do not name Blake or his works in the title, such as John Grant, “Studies in the Organization of Major Romantic Epics” (Harvard Ph.D., 1960), are likely to be omitted here, even though they deal significantly with Blake. Some exceptions are the theses of Rosenblum, Schuchard, and Struck. only three, five or more years after they were accepted for the degree, the information is likely to be accumulated here only in somewhat random fashion, and it is especially likely to be incomplete for the last few years, say 1973-78. In particular, it seems likely that there were more dissertations on Blake written in Germany and Japan than are recorded here.
The national distribution of the universities at which the degrees were awarded is striking: Canada 14 (mostly from Toronto), England 24 (mostly Oxford, Cambridge, and London), Finland 1, France 3, Germany 4, India 3, Ireland 1, Japan 2, New Zealand 1, Scotland 1, Switzerland 4, the United States 204. I have no record of Blake doctoral dissertations in Australia, Italy, or South Africa. About 96% are from the English-speaking world,4↤ 4 Perhaps 98% are in English. which is not surprising, and about 77% are from the United States, which I suppose is not really surprising either, considering that there must be about as many Ph.D. granting universities in the United States as in most of the rest of the world put together. Of the some 23% from outside the U. S. A., a curiously high proportion has been published: fourteen out of fifty-eight. The proportion is doubtless inflated because information about such dissertations is likely to come to hand most readily when they are published—publication is sometimes the condition of their being recorded. I don’t think it would be a fair conclusion that dissertations written on Blake outside the United States are, by international standards, more publishable. Though the minimum Ph.D. standard in Europe and New Zealand is probably higher than that in the U. S., these countries have produced no Blake dissertations so influential as those in the United States, of, say, Mark Schorer, Margaret Ruth Lowery, and Albert S. Roe.
In all, some hundred universities awarded about two hundred sixty doctorates for dissertations on Blake, an average of about 2.4 apiece. The list of begin page 225 | ↑ back to top institutions (see Table below) includes a number not very familiar in international scholarship, such as Ball State University, The University of Lucknow, The University of the Pacific, Åbo University, and The University of Arkansas, but most of the great universities in England and the United States are included; the most conspicuous exceptions I have noted are The University of Michigan and The University of California at Los Angeles. A little less than half the universities represented here have produced only one Blake dissertation, while nineteen universities have fostered one hundred nine of the known Blake dissertations, or nearly half the total. These universities are:
| University | Number | Dates |
| Brandeis | 5 | 1969-75 |
| California (Berkeley) | 4 | 1966-75 |
| Cambridge | 4 | 1939-74 |
| Columbia | 12 | 1953-74 |
| Iowa | 5 | 1960-75 |
| Johns Hopkins | 4 | 1954-74 |
| London | 5 | 1967-71 |
| New York | 7 | 1915-76 |
| North Carolina | 5 | 1951-73 |
| Northwestern | 4 | 1954-73 |
| Ohio State | 4 | 1934-73 |
| Oregon | 4 | 1963-74 |
| Oxford | 4 | 1953-56 |
| Southern California | 4 | 1968-73 |
| Texas | 9 | 1958-75 |
| Toronto | 11 | 1949-76 |
| Washington | 8 | 1941-75 |
| Wisconsin | 11 | 1924-74 |
| Yale | 8 | 1935-73 |
Another way of judging this is by looking at the dissertations which became books, on the assumption that the better theses were published. One must of course be cautious here, for sometimes publication is a condition of acceptance of a dissertation, and inferior works are published at the author’s expense; and sometimes a university press may publish a dissertation from its own institution when another press might not have published it. Some of the best Blake dissertations-become-books were published at presses outside the institutions which originally sponsored them—such as Mark Schorer’s William Blake: The Politics of Vision, Irene Tayler’s Blake’s Illustrations to the Poems of Gray, Morton Paley’s Energy and the Imagination, and Albert Roe’s Blake’s Illustrations to the Divine Comedy. (Contrariwise, of course, publication by the candidate’s own university press is not necessarily a pejorative sign, as indicated by Bo Lindberg’s Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job, Helen White’s Mysticism of William Blake, and Margaret Ruth Lowery’s Windows of the Morning.) The dates of publication of Blake dissertations are interesting: 2 dissertations (100% of 2 finished) in 1910-19; 4 (80% of 5) in 1920-29; 2 (33% of 6) in 1930-39; 3 (37 ½% of 8) in 1940-49; 8 (31% of 26) in 1950-59; 10 (16% of 63) in 1960-69; 7 (5% of 146) thus far in 1970-77. The average length of time from acceptance of the dissertation to publication of the book is about five years, ranging from simultaneous acceptance and publication (e.g., in the case of Bo Lindberg) to twenty-eight years (Norman). The institutions sponsoring Blake dissertations which were published were Abo (1973), Bordeaux (1924), Brandeis (1970—mostly not about Blake), Bristol (1964), Chicago (1968), Columbia (1964, 1967, 1968, 1970), Edinburgh (1970), Freiburg (1925), Harvard (1950), Johns Hopkins (1954), Japan (1950, 1963), New York (1915, 1947), Northwestern (1958), North Carolina (1951), Oxford (1946, 1956), Reading (1951), Stanford (1967), Sussex (1971), Switzerland (1956), Toronto (1949), Washington (1954), Wisconsin (1924, 1936, 1963), Yale (1935, 1964, 1964, 1969, 1970), and Zurich (1911, 1925). Of two hundred sixty dissertations on Blake, thirty-seven (14%) were published. Of the thirty-seven published dissertations, four (Ba Han, Bassalik-de Vries, Dickinson, and Norman) are negligible as books or as dissertations; twenty-two are respectable but not remarkable; and ten would be taken by most scholars as being among the most important works on Blake, works with which any serious student must be familiar. These are the theses of Helen White (1924), Margaret Ruth Lowery (1935), Mark Schorer (1936), A. S. Roe (1950), Robert Gleckner (1954), G. E. Bentley, Jr. (1956), Alicia Ostriker (1963), Morton Paley (1964), Irene Tayler (1967), and Bo Lindberg (1973). The dissertations which turned into distinguished books were from Åbo, Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Stanford, Wisconsin (3), and Yale. Among Anglophone universities, this is a fairly familiar kind of honour-role, with no minor institutions among them. Assuming that all the best dissertations before 1972 have been published, it seems striking that the most distinguished among them were written at universities which have been long, and in this respect apparently justifiably, regarded as among the best of English-speaking universities.
Doubtless the percentage of Blake dissertations published will rise, particularly for those finished after 1966; after all, a dissertation of 1947 was not published until 1975. However, of the thirty-seven theses published thus far, only five took longer than seven years in the press, and in most respects we may regard the books as closed on theses finished before say 1970. This is particularly true of remarkably good books, for only one of them in the past (Mark Schorer’s) took more than seven years to convert from a dissertation (1936) to a book (1946), and doubtless the special circumstance of the war helped to delay its publication.
The proportion of Blake dissertations published has declined from 100% in the first decade (1910-19) begin page 226 | ↑ back to top to 16% for the last one for which the figures are probably nearly complete (1960-69). The first Blake dissertations published seem to be little more than vanity- or must-print-to-submit publications, and until 1940-49 there are so few Blake dissertations that extrapolating trends from them is not very meaningful. (It is, however, striking that the only two Blake dissertations of the 1930s which were published, Lowery’s and Schorer’s, were among the most influential ever to be printed.) The figures (37% to 16%) for the twenty published dissertations of 1940-69 are, however, steadier and more reliable and indicate that two or three in ten of the Blake dissertations finished then were turned into books. Assuming a continuation of the popularity of Blake and a steady demand for books of all kinds (very problematical assumptions, of course), we may expect something like 15% to 20% of the one hundred forty-six Blake theses finished thus far in the 1970s to be published—or twelve more than have yet appeared. If, as in the past, a third of these prove to be distinguished, we have great things to look forward to.
Of two hundred sixty Blake theses, more than half were finished since 1970; the average author of a Blake Ph.D. is not only living but, if an academic in North America, probably does not yet have tenure. More Blake dissertations were completed in 1974 than in the entire period from 1911 to 1950. The chart in Table II (see below) indicates the pattern of completion of Blake dissertations, with a scattering of none to six per year from 1911 until 1967.
The great boom in Blake dissertations began in the 1960s and reached a peak in 1968-74, when there were twice as many Blake theses completed (153) as had ever been made before altogether (70). From 1969 to 1976 (the last year for which the figures are probably fairly complete), on an average eighteen Blake dissertations were completed per year, better than one a month. Blake clearly appealed to the troubled young spirits of the 1960s in the United States. Perhaps today he is in danger of becoming a figure of the Establishment. Certainly he is part of the Academic Establishment, and there is an orthodoxy in Blake studies as in work on more conventional authors.
Or perhaps all the best topics have been taken, and students hesitate to embark on a sea as large as that of Blake scholarship. It must seem difficult to find a plausible topic in Blake which has not previously been treated responsibly, and some of the recent theses seem to be stretching plausibility to cover a good deal of rather surprising matter. Ignoring the Ph.D. dissertations at Rutgers (e.g., G. L. Waters) as being not “theses” at all but merely collections of quite unrelated essays, there are still some surprising theses produced, often at surprising places. The length varies from 56 pages (Bassalik-de Vries, Dickinson) to three volumes (Gabbett-Mulhallen, P. S. Wilson), but it seems to be shortening. A good number are under two hundred pages, and not a few5↤ 5 E.g., Ba Han (1925), Baine (1974), Bassalik-de Vries (1911), Dickinson (1915), Doggett (1974), Fulbright (1973), Scott (1973), Shea (1974), Skelton (1973), C. F. Smith (1973), Steiner (1963). are under 155 pages; one reason there are more Blake theses in 1968-75 may be that they tend to be shorter than previous dissertations and presumably easier to complete. In the 1930s and 1940s there was a tendency to give evocative but not very descriptive titles to Blake books, such as Windows of the Morning or Fearful Symmetry or Infinity on the Anvil. Recent Blake dissertations have been more explicit, if no less modish. Their titles reverberate with critical cult words such as Alienation (1971), Apocalypse (1969 [2], 1970, 1972, 1973, 1976), Archetype (1973, 1974, 1976), Dynamics (1973, 1976), Kinetic Imagery (1975), Strategy (1972), Symbology (1975 [2]), and, of course, Vision (1963, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977). Some deal with peculiarly Blakean problems, such as the relationship of text and design, or the nature of the Form or Structure of his writings,6↤ 6 See Dilgard (1973), Doskow (1972), Fairchild (1975), Fox (1970), Heppner (1970), James (1971), Lesnick (1969), Middleman (1974), Noer (1970), Pananides (1976), Salter (1975), Shook (1966), Wilkinson (1974). and some deal with problems peculiar to this generation, such as the role of the body in Blake (Christian [1973], Frosch [1969], Kostelanetz [1967]) or the role of women (Derderian [1974], M. E. White [1972], Fullbright [1973]). Many are perfectly responsibly on the borders of the Blake world, because they are tracing Blake’s influence on successors such as W. B. Yeats or D. H. Lawrence or James Joyce or D. G. Rossetti, or because they see Blake as merely part of a long tradition of, say, Millenarian Literature (Gershgoren) or Occult Traditions (Schuchard), or because Blake’s poems are merely the context of a musical composition (Karvonen, W. M. Smith). More commonly, Blake is yoked with some other author (e.g., Tagore), often rather arbitrarily, to pull a dissertation which appears to be composed of fairly discrete parts, with wheels of different sizes. The excuse may be common imagery,7↤ 7 See Chayes, Coomar, Daly, Druian, Koper, Lechay, Lento, O’Brien, Rhodes, Schicker, Vogler, Wilkes. say serpents (Pedrini), or parallel subjects of poetry,8↤ 8 See Abel, Bandy, Campbell, Hoeveler, Howard, James, Kessel, Kremen, Lefcowitz, Scholz, Skelton, S. W. Stevenson. or contemporary responses to the same phenomenon (Armah, Kline, Lowenstein). But the results are not likely to illuminate Blake very much, whatever they may do to their authors. So far as the abstracts show, at any rate, the purpose often seems to be to indicate the author’s ingenuity rather than to throw new light on Blake or on the other poets dealt with.
Almost all the two hundred sixty Blake dissertations have been literary in their orientation—indeed, almost all are for English Departments, though one is a Doctorate in Religion (Grimes), another in Sociology (Shain), and a third is a Ph.D. in “The History of Consciousness” (Singh). Only about 10% seem to take much account of the fact that Blake was primarily a visual artist and that all the poems he published were illustrated or “illuminated.” Of the score of dissertations which consider his visual work extensively,9↤ 9 Abel (1976), Behrendt (1974), Bindman (1971), Davies (1973), Eaves (1972), Essick (1969), Foley (1977), Gabbett-Mulhallen (1975), Hower (1974), Hill (1969), Jones (1972), Lemaitre (1953), Lindberg (1973), Lowry (1975), McCord (1977), Mitchell (1968), Roe (1950), Salter (1975), Schaupp[e] (1934), Shook (1966), Tayler (1967), C. R. Taylor (1967), Ward (1974), Warner (1975), Wills (1975), and Wilson (1941). only eight seem to be primarily concerned with the designs, and only three (Bindman, Lindberg, Roe) seem to be by art-historians. And even the dissertations concerned primarily with Blake’s designs mostly concentrate on his book-illustrations, to Young, Job, Dante, Gray, Milton, and Bunyan. Blake has never been treated very seriously by the world of art-historians, and the resulting lacunae in Blake studies have largely been filled, faute de mieux, by literary scholars venturing in strange seas. Just as very few Comparative Literature scholars are fully qualified in both their literatures, very few Blake scholars (indeed none, so far as I know) are fully qualified in both genres of literature and art. For a really satisfying treatment begin page 227 | ↑ back to top of his works in Illuminated Printing, we may have to wait for a double doctor.
The danger of depending upon Dissertation Abstracts or Dissertation Abstracts International for a complete list of dissertations of Blake is manifest. Not only do they exclude all the dissertations here from institutions outside North America, but they systematically omit some of the most distinguished U. S. universities (such as Harvard and Chicago), while some universities do not record all their dissertations. Theses from forty-three universities occasionally or regularly do not appear in DA and DAI so far as Blake dissertations are concerned, including Berkeley, Cambridge, Chicago, Cornell, Edinburgh, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, London, Oxford, Paris, Toronto, Wisconsin, and Yale; and 40% of the Ph.D. dissertations listed here are not in DA or DAI. And of course many dissertations, often the best, are not listed until three to five years after they are completed. We may have to depend upon DA or DAI, but we should recognize that they omit a good many Blake dissertations,10↤ 10 A number of these are included in the Comprehensive Dissertation Query Service, however. including some of the best. The danger of redundancy in Blake theses and studies11↤ 11 For example, there are two theses on images of Satan in Blake, by Domke (1972) and Baine (1975), four on Los by Mandell (1972), Paley (1964), Spinks (1970), and Ruhlman (1974), three on mysticism by Ba Han (1924), Kessel (1929), and Helen White (1924), and two on the critics of “The Mental Traveller” by Dunlap (1974) and Leonard (1976). is therefore a significant one.
Of the two hundred sixty Blake theses, at least seventy-eight (30%) are by women. Of these, sixteen (22%) were completed in 1963-69 and fifty more (64%) are from 1970-77. For the period 1970-77, 35% of the Blake theses are by women. Of the nine really good dissertations-turned-books, an even larger proportion are by women (White [1924], Lowery [1935], Ostriker [1963], and Tayler [1967]). In Blake studies, the emancipation of women’s intellectual energies has not been a recent phenomenon.
In terms of popularity of subject, the most common seem to be influences on Blake from the past, with forty-two theses on his sources and predecessors such as Boehme (3), Milton (8), Newton, and Pope (sic). There are thirty-eight dissertations on Blake and his successors, his reputation, or his influence, including three on James Joyce, two on D. G. Rossetti, four on D. H. Lawrence, and ten (sic) on Yeats. Thirty-three are on Blake and his contemporaries such as Burns (2), Byron (8), Coleridge (10), Goethe, Keats (7), Shelley (11), Thomas Taylor, and Wordsworth (15), though of course most are tracing little more than coincidental relationships with Blake.
For theses concentrating on Blake’s writings themselves, the range of ambition is vast; some dissertations cover all his poetry, while a few spend years on just one lyric such as “The Tyger” (Shea) or “Laughing Song” (Warner). It is striking that most theses concentrating within a narrow range of the poetry focus on the Prophecies, especially the epics:
| Epics | |
| The three epics | 3 |
| Vala | 11 |
| Milton | 11 |
| Jerusalem | 17 |
| Shorter Prophecies | |
| America | 2 |
| Europe | 2 |
| Urizen | 4 |
| Visions | 1 |
| Thel | 1 |
| Lyrics Etc. | |
| Songs | 10 |
| “Mental Traveller” | 2 |
| “Everlasting Gospel” | 2 |
| Marriage | 6 |
| Poetical Sketches | 3 |
There are, naturally, a number of oddities to be found among such a mass of earnest works. Probably many of these authors of theses on William Blake have never seen an original copy of his writings, and some of them seem to write in something like COBOL (Scott), fit only for computers. My favorite, I think, is the abstract which concludes that “His poem [i.e., poetry] commands to be read bodily” (Singh). But of course the vast majority of works here use, if they do not much extend, conventional language and wisdom.
It seems likely that this very extensive activity among writers of dissertations is typical of Blake studies in general, particularly in terms of subjects, attitudes, and methods. Even more significantly, considering the vast number of Blake dissertations produced in the last ten years, it seems a reliable prognostication for the future, for of course these writers of dissertations on Blake are likely to produce hundreds of articles and books on him. It would probably be possible to make a fairly accurate map of the immediate future of Blake studies by studying carefully the trends visible in the last hundred Blake dissertations completed. It is plain that Blake scholars are at least imitating the prodigious energy of their subject, to whom “Energy is Eternal Delight.”
Thirty-eight of the two hundred sixty dissertations on Blake have been published. Some ninety-four scholars (36%) published books or articles beyond their Ph.D. work on Blake; if we ignore degree-recipients of 1972-77, who have not yet had much time to publish, the proportion rises to 46%. The average length of time between the completion of the degree and publication of the first article is one year, ranging from eight years before the thesis was accepted to twelve years afterwards. Of the ninety-four Blake-doctors who have published on Blake, thirty-five (37%) published something on him before the dissertation was finished; another twenty-six (28%) published in the year or the year after the dissertation was finished; another twenty-six (28%) first published on Blake within two to five years of completion of the dissertation; and a final seven (7%) first published on Blake six to twelve years after completing the thesis. Assuming a year between begin page 228 | ↑ back to top
| * MEANS NOT RECORDED IN DA OR DAIUNDERLINED DATES REFER TO DISSERTATIONS WHICH WERE PRINTED | |
| “OXFORD” OR “TORONTO” REFER TO OXFORD UNIVERSITY OR THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO | |
| *Åbo (Finland) | *1973 |
| *Agra (India) | *1967 |
| Arkansas | 1971, 1972, 1975, 1977 |
| Ball State | 1974 |
| *Berne | *1956 |
| *Boston | *1941 (2) |
| Brandeis | 1969, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1977 |
| *Bristol | *1964, 1966 |
| British Columbia | 1974, 1976 |
| Brown | 1954, 1971, 1977 |
| Buffalo; see State University of New York at Buffalo | |
| California | |
| *(Berkeley) | 1966, *1974 (2), *1975 |
| (Davis) | 1969 |
| (Irvine) | 1974, 1977 |
| (Los Angeles) | 1977 |
| (Riverside) | 1969, 1975, 1976 |
| *(Santa Barbara) | *1970, *1976 (2), 1977 |
| (Santa Cruz) | 1973, 1974, 1977 |
| (San Diego) | 1969 |
| *Cambridge | *1939, *1958, *1973, *1974 |
| Case Western Reserve (see also Western Reserve) | 1975 |
| *Chicago | *1954, *1968, *1974, 1977 |
| *Cincinatti | *1931 |
| City University of New York | 1977 |
| Columbia | 1953, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1967, 1968, 1969 (2), 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974 |
| Connecticut | 1969, 1972 |
| *Cornell | *1929, *1940, 1975 |
| *Edinburgh | *1970 |
| Emory | 1967, 1977 |
| *Exeter | *1969, *1972 (2) |
| Florida State | 1966, 1976 |
| *Freiburg | *1925, *1955 |
| Georgia | 1974 |
| *Harvard | *1950, *1963 |
| Howard | 1976 |
| Illinois | 1973, 1975, 1976 |
| Indiana | 1965, 1969 |
| Iowa | 1960, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975 |
| *Japan | *1950, *1963 |
| *Johns Hopkins | *1954, *1960, 1968, 1973 |
| Kent State | 1974 |
| *Lancaster | *1971 |
| *Leeds | *1970 |
| *London | *1967 (2), *1968, *1970, *1971 |
| *Lucknow | *1951, *1969 |
| *Marburg | *1922 |
| Marquette | 1974 |
| Maryland | 1967, 1970, 1972, 1977 |
| Massachusetts | 1973, 1974, 1975 |
| Miami | 1976 |
| Michigan State | 1974 |
| Minnesota | 1954, 1970, 1971, 1976 |
| Mississippi | 1973 |
| Missouri | 1973 |
| Nebraska | 1969, 1970 (2), 1976 |
| New Mexico | 1969, 1971, 1973 |
| *New York | *1915, *1947, 1966, 1968, 1971, 1975, 1976 |
| *North Carolina | *1951, 1968 (2), 1971, 1972 |
| Northwestern | 1954, 1958, 1971, 1972 |
| *Nottingham | *1964 |
| *Ohio State | *1934, 1970, 1971, 1973 |
| Oregon | 1963, 1967, 1973, 1974 |
| *Oxford D. Phil. | *1956 |
| B. Litt. | *1953, *1954, *1956 |
| B. D. | *1946 |
| *Pacific | *1975 |
| *Paris | *1948, *1953 |
| Pennsylvania | 1971, 1976 |
| Pennsylvania State | 1970 |
| Pittsburgh | 1974 |
| Princeton | 1968, 1975 |
| *Queen’s (Belfast) | *1970 |
| *Queen’s (Kingston, Ontario) | *1974 |
| *Reading | *1951 |
| *Rostock | *1935 |
| Rutgers | 1968, 1974 |
| Southern California | 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973 |
| Southern Illinois | 1969 |
| Stanford | 1967 |
| State University of New York | |
| (Albany) | 1973 |
| (Buffalo) | 1952, 1967, 1974 |
| *(Stony Brook) | 1972, 1976, 1976 |
| *Sussex | *1971 |
| *Switzerland | *1911 |
| Syracuse | 1969 |
| Texas | 1958, 1966 (2), 1971, 1974 (2), 1975 (2), 1976 |
| Texas Christian | 1973 |
| Texas Women’s | 1974 |
| Toledo | 1976 |
| *Toronto | *1949, 1963, 1970, 1972, *1975 (3), *1976, 1977 |
| Tufts | 1971 |
| Tulane | 1967, 1972 |
| Tulsa | 1970 (2), 1975 |
| Vanderbilt | 1973 |
| *Victoria (Wellington, New Zealand) | *1952 |
| *Washington (Seattle) | 1941, 1954, 1954, 1967, *1972, 1972, 1974, 1975 |
| Washington State | 1975 |
| Wayne State | 1967 |
| *Western Reserve | *1963 |
| *Wisconsin | *1924, *1936, 1957, 1962, 1963, 1971, 1972 (3), 1974 |
| *Yale | *1935, *1964, 1964, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1970, 1971, 1977 |
| *Zurich | *1911, *1925 |
In all, authors of dissertations on Blake have published thirty books beyond the dissertation (sixty-seven books including the dissertations) and three hundred fifty-seven articles (4,271 pages). Of these ninety-four authors, sixteen (17%) have thus far published less than six pages, while ten of them (11%) published over one hundred pages of articles each—2,209 pages in all, or 51% of the total number of article-pages by authors who wrote doctoral dissertations on Blake. Five authors have produced one hundred seventeen articles (32% of the total) and seventeen post-Ph.D. books (57% of the total)—and three of these five also published their dissertations. Of those who published theses on Blake, thirteen wrote nothing more on him (save perhaps reviews), one wrote another book, seven wrote books and articles on him, and fifteen wrote articles on him. And one hundred sixty-eight authors of Blake theses have as yet published neither book nor article on him. The labours of Blake scholarship have not been very equally divided.
The vagaries of energy and accomplishment are wonderful and difficult of prediction. We can neither predict nor produce another Sir Geoffrey Keynes, who has thus far produced over seventy articles and fifty books on Blake,12↤ 12 See “Geoffrey Keynes’s Work on Blake: Fons et Origo, and a Checklist of his Writings of Blake 1910-72,” pp. 349-376 of William Blake: Essays in honour of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, ed. M. D. Paley & M. Phillips (Oxford, 1973). His first Blake article was in 1910, the year before the first Blake Ph.D. was completed, and his most recent book appeared in 1977. but we can train and foster the intellectual energies of young women and young men so that they can recognize genius and evaluate it, in a Keynes or a Blake. There is a wonderful paradox in these hundreds of literary doctors diagnosing the work of an uneducated poet, a paradox which would, I think, have tickled their subject. The energy now devoted to Blake around the English-speaking world, particularly through studies by scholars with a doctorate about Blake, is likely to multiply works and, I hope, knowledge about the man who wrote that “Energy is the only life.”13↤ 13 This article, first completed in April 1977, has been finished a number of times since then, as the months passed and new Blake dissertations and publications by authors of Blake theses came to my attention. Of course, each new dissertation discovered required the revision of all generalizations referring to it (e.g., “two hundred sixty dissertations on Blake”), an exceedingly extensive and worrying process. The text above comprehends information I had absorbed up to September 1978; I learned thereafter of the theses by Bullard, Cox, O’Hare, Riede, Tolley, Warner, Wieland-Burston, and Wilfong, and have not attempted to alter the text yet again to refer to them.
DISSERTATIONS ON WILLIAM BLAKE 1911-76
The supplementary information is derived from Blake Books (1977).
Abel, Elizabeth Frances. “The Married Arts: Poetry and Painting in Blake and Baudelaire.”[e] DAI, XXXVII (1976), 290A. Princeton Ph.D., 1975.
Adams, Hazard. “The Structure of Myth in the Poetry of William Blake and W. B. Yeats.” DA, XIV (1954), 105-6A. Washington Ph.D., 1953.
Printed as Blake and Yeats: The Contrary Vision (Ithaca, 1955) Cornell Studies in English Volume XL (Reprinted N.Y., 1968). He has also published 1 book (1963) and 7 articles (119 pp., 1954-76) on Blake.
Anderson, William Davis. “‘Awake Ye Dead’: A Study of Blake’s The Book of Urizen, The Four Zoas, and Jerusalem.” DA, XXVIII (1967), 1386A. Texas Ph.D., 1966.
Armah, Ayi Kwei. “The Romantic Response to the Industrial Revolution: A Sociological Study of the Works of William Blake, 1757-1827 and William Wordsworth, 1770-1850.” Harvard Ph.D., 1963.
Ault, Donald A. “Visionary Physics: Blake’s Response to Newton.” Chicago Ph.D., 1968.
Printed with the same title (Chicago & London, 1974). He has also published 1 article (1 p., 1975) on Blake.
Ba-Han, Maung. The Evolution of Blakean Philosophy. Rangoon [1926].
A pastiche of commonplaces (94 pp.), originally a 1925 Freiberg Ph.D.
Ba-Han, Maung. William Blake His Mysticism. Bordeaux, 1924.
Blake’s mysticism consists in “his insights on the supreme value of the ‘self’” (p. 237); this was a Bordeaux Ph.D.
Baine, Mary Rion. “Satan and the Satan Figure in the Poetry of William Blake.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 5335-6A. Georgia Ph.D., 1974.
A 137-page argument that Blake “was far from the conventional Satanist.” She has collaborated on 5 essays on Blake (16 pp.).
Ballin, Michael G. “D. H. Lawrence and William Blake: A Critical Study in Influence and Analogy.” Toronto Ph.D., 1972. See DAI, XXXIV (1974), 5754A.
Concerned mostly with analogies in Lawrence.
Bandy, Melanie Flossie. “The Idea of Evil in the Poetry of Blake and Shelley: A Comparative Study.” DAI, XXXII (1972), 5218A. New Mexico Ph.D., 1971.
“This analogical study” discovers “striking similarities.”
Bassalik-de Vries, J. C. E. William Blake in his Relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Basel, 1911.
A 56-page Zurich Ph.D., not notably accurate.
Behrendt, Stephen C. “Liberating the Awakener: William Blake’s Illustrations to John Milton’s Poetry.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 4415A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1974.
Bentley, G. E., Jr. Ed., “William Blake’s Four Zoas.” 2 vols. Oxford D. Phil., 1956.
Printed as Vala or The Four Zoas: A Facsimile of the Manuscript, a Transcript of the Poem and a Study of its Growth and Significance (Oxford, 1963). He has also published 8 books (1964-77) and 54 articles (500 pp., 1954-78) on Blake.
Bentley, G. E., Jr. “William Blake and the Alchemical Philosophers.” Oxford B. Litt., 1954.
Diffuse and inconclusive.
Benzel, Michael Arnold. “Vision and Revision in The Four Zoas: The Evidence of the Manuscript.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 6492A. Toledo Ph.D., 1976.
Vala is revised from Orcian wrath to Christian mercy.
Bindman, David. “The Artistic Ideas of William Blake.” London Ph.D., 1971.
He has published 4 books (1970-78) and 8 articles (23 pp., 1966-74) on Blake.
begin page 231 | ↑ back to topBishai, N. Z. “The Light Thrown on the Poetry of Blake, Byron, and Tennyson by the Composers Who Have Set its Words to Music.” London Ph.D., 1967.
Blackwell, J. C. “William Blake and the English Empiricists.” Bristol Ph.d., 1966.
Blois, Raymond Earl. “The American Reputation and Influence of William Blake.” Boston Ph.D., 1941, abstracted as a 3-page leaflet by the Boston University Graduate School.
Bloxham, Laura Jeanne. “William Blake and Visionary Poetry in the Twentieth Century.” DAI, XXXVI (1976), 5275A. Washington State Ph.D., 1975.
A study of Blake’s influence on Theodore Roethke, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg.
Blue, Denise E. “Visionary Literature and Finnegans Wake.” DAI, XXXVI (1974), 3724A. California (Irvine) Ph.D., 1974.
“I discuss how Joyce treats Giambattista Vico and William Blake as visionary predecessors. . . .”
Bogen, Nancy Ruth. “A Critical Edition of William Blake’s Book of Thel, with a New Interpretation.” DAI, XXXII (1971), 908. Columbia Ph.D., 1968.
Printed as The Book of Thel: A [Colour] Facsimile [of copy M] and a Critical Text. Ed. Nancy Bogen (Providence & N.Y., 1971). The bibliographical details are novel and important. She has also published 7 articles (49 pp., 1966-70) on Blake.
Borck, Jim Springer. “William Blake: A Prophetic Tradition.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 1750-1A. California (Riverside) Ph.D., 1969.
“This dissertation . . . places the form Blake uses in an appropriate historical context . . . primarily concerned with the language that prophets use.”
Bromberg, Pamela Starr. “Blake and the Spectre of Milton.” DAI, XXXIV (1973), 2548-9A. Yale Ph.D., 1973.
A “study [of] Blake’s poetic relationship with Milton”; “Blake challenged Milton to a full epic contest.”
Bullard, William Fleming. “Embodied Semblances: A Comparative Study of William Blake’s The Four Zoas and D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow.” Boston College Ph.D., 1976.
Callahan, Patrick Jeremiah. “Historical and Critical Problems in William Blake’s America.” DAI, XXX (1969), 717A. Nebraska Ph.D., 1969.
America “presents the outlook and spirit of the London radical movement.” He has published 1 article (11 pp., 1971) on Blake.
Campbell, William Royce. “The Views of Blake and Shelley on Man in Society.” DA, XXVII (1968), 3632-3A. Oregon Ph.D., 1967.
Carlson, Craig B. “Yeats’ Use of Blake.” Exeter Ph.D., 1972.
Carner, Frank K[enneth]. “Four Contexts for the Study of the Relationship of Text and Design in the Illuminated Books of William Blake.” Toronto Ph.D., 1976. See DAI, XXXVIII (1978), 6138-9A.
He has published a note on Blake (1 p., 1969).
Carothers, Yvonne Marie. “Romantic Enthusiasm: Blake, Coleridge, and Shelley.” DAI, XXXVIII (1978), 5492-3A. California (Irvine) Ph.D., 1977.
Chaubey, Sushil Kumar. “Child in Blake’s Poetry.” University of Lucknow Ph.D., 1951.
Chaubey, Sushil Kumar. “Study of Blake’s influence on his successors together with a consideration of his ideas in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” University of Lucknow D. Litt., 1969.
Chayes, Irene Hendry. “The Circle and the Stair: Patterns of Romantic Theme and Form in the Poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats.” Johns Hopkins Ph.D., 1960.
She has published 8 articles (96 pp., 1961-74) on Blake.
Cherry, Charles Lester. “Critical Edition of William Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion.” DA, XXIX (1969), 4452A. North Carolina Ph.D., 1968.
He has published 2 articles (19 pp., 1969-70) on Blake.
Chillag, Robert Charles. “Image and Meaning in William Blake’s Poetry.” DA, XIV (1954), 2343A. Northwestern Ph.D., 1954.
Christian, Diane. “‘The Eternal Body’: A Study of the Structural Metaphor in the Work of William Blake.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 7183-4A. Johns Hopkins Ph.D., 1973.
Clarke, John Covell. “The Psychology of Blake’s Visionary Mythopoeia.” Western Reserve Ph.D., 1963.
Coomar, Devinder Mohan. “Silence, Language and the Poetry of Criticism in Romantic Expression: Blake, Keats, Foscolo, and Tagore.” DAI, XXXVII (1976), 3601-2A. California (Riverside) Ph.D., 1976.
Coon, Stephen William. “Roads of Excess: Towards a Poetics of Visionary Writing: Blake, Burroughs, Lautréamont,[e] Michaux.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977). 242A. Brown Ph.D., 1976.
The Marriage “is, to a surprising extent, a work writing about itself.”
Cowling, William Hammill. “Blake and the Redeemer-Poet.” DAI, XXXI (1969), 382-3A. Indiana Ph.D., 1969.
Cox, Stephen D. “‘The Stranger Within Thee’: The Self in British Literature of the Later Eighteenth Century.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 2193-4A. California (Los Angeles) Ph.D., 1976.
Deals with “the works of Richardson, Gray, Chatterton, Cowper, and Blake.”
Crompton, Louis W. “Blake’s Nineteenth Century Critics.” Chicago Ph.D., 1954.
A sound, thorough study. He published one article (3pp., 1957) on Blake.
Curtis, F. B. “The Vision and the Work of William Blake.” Lancaster M. Litt., 1971.
He published 2 articles (13 pp., 1972-74) on Blake.
begin page 232 | ↑ back to topDaeley, Carol Ann. “Image of Infinite: William Blake’s Language of Poetry.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 2215A. California (Riverside) Ph.D., 1975.
Daly, Michael Joseph. “The Marriage Metaphor and the Romantic Prophecy: A Study of the Uses of the Epithalamium in the Poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge.” DA, XXIX (1969), 2254A. Southern California Ph.D., 1968.
Dargan, Tom. “Blake, Stonehenge, and the New Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXIX (1978), 893A. State University of New York (Stony Brook) Ph.D., 1978.
“Jerusalem is an earnest parody” of 18th Century antiquarians, for “Blake is rewriting the antiquarians’ ancient history to let it prophecy a republican revolution in England.” He has published 1 collaborative essay on Blake (46 pp., 1973).
Davies, J. G. “The Theology of William Blake.” Oxford B.D., 1946.
Printed (Oxford, 1948; Hampden, Connecticut, 1965).
Davies, James Mark Quentin. “Blake’s Designs for Paradise Lost: A Critical Analysis.” DAI, XXXIII (1973), 6866-7A. Iowa Ph.D., 1972.
“The series are not literal illustrations but astute critical commentaries on the shortcomings of Milton’s epic . . . .”
Davis, John Lindsay. “Blake and the Rhetoric of Humor.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 2936A. Texas Ph.D., 1974.
Blake’s “use of . . . [the] rhetoric [of humor] is surprisingly frequent”; it is didactic, satiric, and ironic.
Davis, John Lowell. “Blake and Boehme.” Cincinnati Ph.D., 1931.
Deboo, Kitayun Erachshaw. “The Principle of the Cycle in James Joyce’s Ulysses and William Blake’s The Mental Traveller.” DA, XXVIII (1967), 632A. State University of New York (Buffalo) Ph.D., 1967.
“The parallel . . . is in the psychic states.”
Deck, Raymond H., Jr. “Blake and Swedenborg.” Brandeis Ph.D., 1977.
A careful and original study placing Blake firmly in the Swedenborgian context of his times. He published 5 articles (42 pp.) on Blake in 1977.
Derderian, Nancy Cebula. “Against the Patriarchal Pomp! A Study of the Feminine Principle in the Poetry of William Blake.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 4425A. State University of New York (Buffalo) Ph.D., 1974.
“I explore through close textual analysis, the sexual argument for Blake’s rebellion against a ‘classical’ attitude.”
Dickinson, Kate Laetitia. William Blake’s Anticipation of the Individualistic Revolution. (N. Y., 1915) Reprinted (Folcroft, Pennsylvania, 1969). New York Ph.D., 1915.
A 56-page thesis, privately printed.
Dilgard, Cynthia Corlew. “The Structure of Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXIV (1973), 2553-4A. Vanderbilt Ph.D., 1973.
“Blake structures . . . [it] according to the Divine Analogy.”
Disalvo, Jacqueline Anne. “War of Titans: Blake’s Confrontation with Milton. The Four Zoas as Political Critique of Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 3456A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1977.
“Blake transforms” the “tradition of merging religion, politics, and art” which he shares with Milton “into an almost historical materialist one, a breakthrough celebrated” in Vala Night VIIa. She has published two essays on Blake (51 pp., 1972-75).
Doggett, John Rentz, III. “A Reading of William Blake’s The Book of Urizen.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 2936A. Texas Ph.D., 1974.
A reading “without recourse to external sources and to other works of Blake” in 144 pages.
Domke, Charlotte Frances Townsend. “Progeny of Fire: A Study of Blake’s Satanic Images.” DAI, XXXII (1972), 5733-4A. Texas Ph.D., 1971.
Dorfman, Deborah. “The Development of William Blake’s Reputation as a Poet in the Nineteenth Century.” Yale Ph.D., 1964.
Printed as Blake in the Nineteenth Century: His Reputation as a Poet From Gilchrist to Yeats. (New Haven & London, 1969) Yale Studies in English Volume CLXX. A useful study, concentrating on Gilchrist and Ellis & Yeats. She has also published 1 article on Blake (23 pp., 1967).
Doskow, Minna Levine. “Structure and Meaning in William Blake’s Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXIII (1972), 2322-3A. Maryland Ph.D., 1972.
“Jerusalem displays a thematic rather than a narrative unity.”
Drescher, Timothy Wallace. “Art and Alienation in Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” DAI, XXXII (1971), 386A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1971.
About Blake’s “manipulation of dialectical progression in text and design to effectively eliminate alienation between the reader and the objective work”; “the reader must participate in the Marriage.”
Druian, Michael Gregory. “Visual Imagination in Blake’s Jerusalem and Goethe’s Faust II.” DAI, XXXIV (1973), 1238A. Oregon Ph.D., 1973.
“The mode of operation of imagination is primarily visual.”
Dunbar, Pamela M. “A Study of Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Milton.” Cambridge Ph.D., 1973.
Dunlap, Ann Bush. “Blake’s ‘The Mental Traveller’ and the Critics.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 6586-7A. New Mexico Ph.D., 1973.
Tries to understand the poem “through a systematic study of the poem’s [37] critics.”
Durstine, Jean Marie. “William Blake’s Theory of Art and Its Application to His Poetry.” DA, XXVI (1965), 2748-9A. Indiana Ph.D., 1965.
“The chaotic form of the prophecies” results from Blake’s theory of art.
begin page 233 | ↑ back to topEasson, Roger Ralph. “The Rhetoric and Style of Apocalypse in William Blake’s Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 2873A. Tulsa Ph.D., 1970.
“Blake’s rationale in Jerusalem involves a concerted and sophisticated attempt to confuse and yet tantalize the reader. . . .” He has also published 1 collaborative book (1972); co-founded and edited Blake Studies (1968 ff.); published 6 articles (35 pp., 1971-77) on Blake.
Eaves, Morris Emery. “Blake’s Artistic Strategy.” DAI, XXXIII (1972), 1165-6A. Tulane Ph.D., 1972.
Eaves has published 5 articles (86 pp., 1970-77) on Blake, and co-edited Blake Newsletter (1970 ff.). Blake’s text cannot be separated from his designs.
Elliott, Patricia Dell. “A Critical Variorum Edition of William Blake’s The Book of Urizen.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 2804A. Arkansas Ph.D., 1977.
“A study of . . . its meaning for the individual,” followed by chronologically arranged excerpts from critics of Urizen.
Essick, Robert Newman. “The Art of William Blake’s Early Illuminated Books.” California (San Diego) Ph.D., 1969. See DAI, XXX (1969), 2020-1A.
A useful study of the illuminations through the Visions (1793). He has published 2 collaborative books (1972-73) and 15 articles (352 pp., 1969-78) on Blake.
Evans, James Carl. “Epistemology, Aesthetics, and ‘Divine Analogy’: A Study of the Poetics of William Blake.” Queen’s (Kingston, Ontario) Ph.D., 1974.
He has published an essay on Blake (8 pp., 1972).
Fairchild, Bertram Harry, Jr. “‘Such Holy Song’: Music as Idea, Form, and Image in the Poetry of William Blake.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 900A. Tulsa Ph.D., 1975.
He has published 1 article (17 pp., 1976) on Blake.
Ferber, Michael. “Religion and Politics in William Blake.” Harvard Ph.D., 1976.
He has published an article on Blake (10 pp., 1978).
Fisher, Peter F. “The Doctrine of William Blake in the Background of the Eighteenth Century. Part I: The Doctrine in its Larger Historical Setting.” Toronto Ph.D., 1949.
Printed as The Valley of Vision: Blake as Prophet and Revolutionary. Ed. Northrop Frye. (Toronto 1961) University of Toronto Department of English Studies and Texts, No. 9. Reprinted (Toronto, 1971). Part II does not form part of the thesis and was reserved “for inclusion in the book which I hope to produce” but which was apparently never written. Fisher also published 2 articles (42 pp., 1959-61) on Blake.
Fite, Monte D. “Yeats as an Editor of Blake: Interpretation and Emendation in The Works of William Blake, Poetic, Symbolic and Critical.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 355A. North Carolina Ph.D., 1968.
“The purpose of this study is to relate Yeats’s editorial emendations to his critical and interpretive commentary and to conclude how he beheld Blake’s subject matter, symbology, and poetics.”
Flatto, Elie. “The Social and Political Ideas of William Blake.” DA, XXVII (1967), 3870A. New York University Ph.D., 1966.
Foley, Matthew Joseph. “English Printing & Book Illustration 1780-1820.” DAI, XXXVIII (1978), 6368A. California (Santa Cruz) Ph.D., 1977.
“This dissertation addresses itself to transformations which took place in English printing and book illustration from 1780-1820,” dealing with Blake in Chapters IV-V.
Fox, Susan Christine. “Hammer and Loom: The Design of Blake’s Milton.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 6547A. Yale Ph.D., 1970.
Printed as Poetic Form in Blake’s Milton (Princeton, 1976). “The two books of the Milton are exhaustively parallel.” She has also published one article (15 pp., 1970) on Blake.
Freedman, Marsha Brody. “Blake’s Kinetic Imagery: A Symbology of Perceptual Process.” California (Berkeley) Ph.D., 1975.
Freiburg, Stanley Kenneth. “The Artist’s Year: A Study of the Meaning of Time in the Life and Works of William Blake.” DA, XVII (1957), 848A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1957.
He published 1 article (12 pp., 1969) on Blake.
Frosch, Thomas Richard. “The Awakening of Albion: The Renovation of the Body in William Blake’s Jerusalem.” DAI, XXX (1969), 1561A. Yale Ph.D., 1969.
Printed as The Awakening of Albion: The Renovation of the Body in the Poetry of William Blake. (Ithaca & London, 1974). “A literalistic reading of Blake’s imagery of the fall and resurrection of the human body. . . .”
Frost, Everett Calvin. “The Prophet Armed: William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” DAI, XXXII (1971), 2685A. Iowa Ph.D., 1971.
The Marriage “is a carefully organized narrative of the training of a prophet.” He published 1 collaborative article (1 p., 1972) on Blake.
Fulbright, James Stephen. “William Blake and the Emancipation of Woman.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 7132A. Missouri Ph.D., 1973.
A 118-page essay on Blake’s ideas of 1778-93 and his relations with such “close friends” as James Barry and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Gabbett-Mulhallen, K. A.[e] “Blake’s Night Thoughts Designs: Context, Christology and Composite Work.” 3 vols. Toronto Ph.D., 1975.
She has published two essays on Blake (27 pp., 1976-78).
Galbraith, Thomas William. “A ‘Fresher Morning’: Blake Labors to Awaken Man.” DAI, XXXVII (1976), 984A. Washington Ph.D., 1975.
Approaches Blake’s poetry “as a record of growth and discovery.”
begin page 234 | ↑ back to topGallant, Christine Condit. “Regeneration through Archetype: William Blake’s Changing Myth in The Four Zoas.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 3480A. Minnesota Ph.D., 1976.
“Analysing Vala from a Jungian viewpoint.”
Gandolfo, Anita Marie. “Every Man’s Wisdom: Literary Affiliation Among Blake, Yeats, and Joyce.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 1408A. City University of New York Ph.D., 1977.
“My dissertation establishes the nature of the affiliation between Blake and Yeats and Blake and Joyce through a study of the later artist’s knowledge. . . .”
Gershgoren, Sid Carl. “Millenarian and Apocalyptic Literature from Thomas Burnet to William Blake.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 2385A. California (Davis) Ph.D., 1969.
The thesis is “primarily concerned with eighteenth century apocalyptic poetry,” but Blake is not mentioned in the abstract.
Gillham, D. G. “William Blake’s Account of the Imagination: A Critical and Historical Study of the Songs of Innocence and Experience [sic].” Bristol Ph.D., 1964.
Presumably this is the work printed as Blake’s Contrary States: The ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ as Dramatic Poems (Cambridge, 1969). He has also published 1 book (1973) and 2 articles (34 pp., 1968-75) on Blake.
Gleckner, Robert F. “William Blake, The Piper and the Bard.” Johns Hopkins Ph.D., 1954.
Printed in The Piper & The Bard: a study of William Blake (Detroit, 1959). Reprinted (1960). He has also printed 18 articles (192 pp., 1955-77) on Blake.
Glen, Heather J. “Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads: A Comparative Study in Relation to the Thought of their Time.” Cambridge Ph.D., 1974.
Goldstein, Laurence Alan. “The Mercy of Eternity: Aspects of Regeneration in The Prelude and Milton.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 6548A. Brown Ph.D.
Goslee, Nancy Moore. “Mutual Amity: Paradise Lost and the Romantic Epic.” DAI, XXX (1969), 723A. Yale Ph.D., 1968.
The Romantic epics are Milton, Prometheus Unbound, and Hyperion. She has published an essay on Blake (22 pp., 1974).
Grant, Philip Bernard. “Blake’s The Everlasting Gospel: An Edition and Study.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 4366-7A. Pennsylvania Ph.D., 1976.
Includes “a reading of the poem as visionary casuistry.”
Green, Ruth Notkin. “Literary Critical Theory of William Blake.” Boston Ph.D., 1941.
Grimes, Ronald L. “The Dynamics of Vision in the Major Prophetic Works of William Blake.” DAI, XXXIII (1973), 5816-7A. Columbia Ph.D. in religion, 1970.
Published as The Divine Imagination: William Blake’s Prophetic Visions (Metuchen, N. J., 1972) ATLA [American Theological Library Association] Monograph Series No. 1.
He has published 1 article (22 pp., 1973) on Blake.
Gretton, Francis. “Images of Color in the Poetry of William Blake.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 3740A. Columbia Ph.D., 1974.
Haight, Richard Paul. “Pope’s Dunciad and Blake’s Jerusalem: An Epic Eighteenth Century Dialogue.” DAI, XXXII (1972), 6375A. Ohio State Ph.D., 1971.
On their “thematic and structural complementarities and antagonisms.”
Hall, Mary Starritt. “Materialism and the Myths of Blake.” DA, XXXIX (1968), 1208A. Princeton Ph.D., 1968.
Deals with “historical studies of myth.” She has published 1 article (11 pp., 1970) on Blake.
Hampton, Nigel. “William Blake’s ‘Art of Poetry’: A Critical Supplement to Five Minor Prophecies.” DAI, XXXII (1972), 5785A. Connecticut Ph.D., 1972.
The five Prophecies are Thel, Visions, Urizen, Ahania, and The Book of Los.
Harper, George Mills. “William Blake and Thomas Taylor: A Study in the Romantic Revival of Platonism.” North Carolina Ph.D., 1951.
Printed as The Neoplatonism of William Blake (Chapel Hill, 1961). Occasionally persuasive arguments that Blake was extensively and deeply indebted to Plato and to his 18th Century disciple Thomas Taylor. Harper has also published 10 articles (128 pp., 1953-75) on Blake.
Hartley, William Joseph. “The Golden String: William Blake’s Epistemology.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 5102A. Vanderbilt Ph.D., 1973.
“The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss Blake’s development of a theory of knowing which would permit man to see past his fallen state on to the state of the Eternals,” especially in a few of the early Prophecies.
Heppner, Christopher A. E. “The Problem of Form in Blake’s Prophecies.” Toronto Ph.D., 1970. See DAI, XXXII (1971), 433A.
He has published an essay on Blake (20 pp., 1972).
Herbert, Jack. “William Blake and the Interpretation of Poetry and Painting.” Cambridge M. Litt., 1958.
Herrstrom, David Sten. “Mythopoeia and Blake’s Major Prophecies.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 3652A. New York University Ph.D., 1975.
“Blake is not a mythmaker but a poet who exploits mythic modes of perception. . . .”
Herzing, Thomas W. “Ceaseless Mental Fight: William Blake and Eighteenth-Century Thought.” DAI, XXXIII (1973), 4345-6A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1972.
On Blake’s fight with 18th Century thought. Herzing has published 1 article (16 pp., 1974) on Blake.
Hill, Gillian McMahon. “Blake as Interpreter: His Illustrations to Young, Gray and Blair, with a begin page 235 | ↑ back to top Descriptive Catalogue of, and Subject Index to the Drawings for Young’s Night Thoughts.” Exeter Ph.D., 1972.
Hill, Melvyn Alan. “Politics and Art in the Poetry of William Blake.” Chicago Ph.D., 1969.
Hirst, Désirée. “A Study of Blake’s Milton.” Oxford B. Litt., 1953.
A provocative study of Blake’s mythological sources. She has published 1 book (1964) and 6 articles (23 pp., 1950-78) on Blake.
Hoeveler, Diane Long. “The Erotic Apocalypse: The Androgynous Ideal in Blake and Shelley.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 6498A. Illinois Ph.D., 1976.
Both “employed the symbol of the androgyne to depict an asexual state of consciousness.”
Holmberg, Carol E. “A Study of William Blake’s Fourfold Perceptive Process as Interpreted by William Butler Yeats.” DAI, XXXIII (1971), 2666A. Minnesota Ph.D., 1971.
The Yeats source seems to be exclusively “The Necessity of Symbolism” (1893).
Hoover, Suzanne Robinson. “William Blake in the Wilderness: The Early History of His Reputation.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 1231A. Columbia Ph.D., 1967.
She has published 4 articles (68 pp., 1972-74) on Blake.
Howard, John Douglas, Jr. “The Child-Hero in the Poetry of Blake, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.” DA, XXVIII (1968), 2647A. Maryland Ph.D., 1967.
“Blake sees the child’s power as two kinds of innocence.” He has published a book (1976) and an article (10 pp., 1968) on Blake.
Hower, Harold E. “The Aesthetics of Composite Art in William Blake’s Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 3683-4A. Kent State Ph.D., 1974.
Humma, John B. “From Transcendental to Descendental: The Romantic Thought of Blake, Nietzsche, Lawrence.” DAI, XXX (1970), 4454A. Southern Illinois Ph.D., 1969.
He has published 1 article (8 pp., 1973) on Blake.
Jackson, Mary Vera. “A Study of the Use of Poetic Myth in the Work of William Blake from 1783 to 1794.” DAI, XXX (1970), 5410-11A. Washington Ph.D., 1969.
She has published 3 articles (30 pp., 1971-77) on Blake.
James, David Edmund. “Written Within and Without: Form and Structure in Blake’s Milton.” DAI, XXXII (1972), 4614A. Pennsylvania Ph.D., 1971.
James, William Lloyd. “The Black Man in English Romantic Literature, 1772-1833.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 2808A. California (Los Angeles) Ph.D., 1977.
“The study’s concluding chapter examines the relationship of William Blake to slavery.”
Jones, Warren. “Blake’s Large Color-Printed Drawings of 1795.” DAI, XXXIII (1973), 6873A. Northwestern Ph.D., 1972.
Kaplan, Nancy A. “William Blake’s The Four Zoas: The Rhetoric of Vision.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 2846-7A. Cornell Ph.D., 1975.
Especially on the relationship of text and design.
Karvonen, Paul Edwin. “Part I: Concert Overture for Orchestra. Part II: The Little Black Boy for Soprano Solo, String Quartet, and Clarinet, to the Poems of William Blake.” DA, XXII (1961), 595A. Iowa Ph.D., 1960.
Kauvar, Elaine Mozer. “Blake’s Botanical Imagery.” DAI, XXXII (1971), 3255-6A. Northwestern Ph.D., 1971.
“The present study traces the effect of Blake’s context on his organic imagery.”
Keating, Ruth Aikman. “A Fourth Dimension in Word and Picture: William Blake’s Theory of Imagination.” DAI, XXXVI (1976), 6115A. Texas Women’s University Ph.D., 1974.
“The works considered are all the lyrics of Songs of Innocence and several lyrics of Songs of Experience.”
Keene, Michael Lawrence. “The Expansive Vision: Visual Perception and Romantic Poetry.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 5143A. Texas Ph.D., 1976.
A thesis “demonstrating expansive vision in the poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.”
Kellog, Seth. “Tragic Generation: A Commentary on Some Works of William Blake and on the Book of Genesis.” DAI, XXXIV (1973), 3346-7A. Massachusetts Ph.D., 1973.
“A critical reading [sic] of some works by William Blake and of the Book of Genesis as Blake read it.”
Kessel, Marcel. “A Comparative Study of Blake and Wordsworth as Mystical Writers.” Cornell Ph.D., 1929.
Kiralis, Karl. “Critical Edition (in Two Volumes) of William Blake’s Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804-1820).” DA, XIV (1954), 2347-8A. Brown Ph.D., 1954.
He has published 8 articles (113 pp., 1955-69) on Blake.
Kline, Alfred Allan. “The English Romantics and the American Republic; An Analysis of the Concept of America in the Work of Blake, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley.” DA, XIV (1954), 112A. Columbia Ph.D., 1953.
He has published 1 article (1 p., 1956) on Blake.
Ko, So Woong. “A Study of Japanese Criticism of William Blake’s Poetry.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 2141A. Nebraska Ph.D., 1976.
“The Japanese have shown us a remarkable cultural receptivity in the study of William Blake.”
Kolker, Robert Phillip. “The Altering Eye: William Blake’s Use of Eighteenth-Century Poetics.” DAI XXX (1969), 1987A. Columbia Ph.D., 1969.
Blake “carries Augustan humanism as far as it will go.”
begin page 236 | ↑ back to topKoper, Peter Thomas. “Authentic Speech: An Essay with Investigations of the Rhetoric of Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, and William Blake.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 6594-5A. Texas Christian Ph.D., 1973.
Johnson’s Rambler essays, Burke’s Reflections, and Blake’s Marriage have “a common rhetorical pattern,” i.e., “spatial rather than linear,” “the structure of a montage.”
Kostelanetz, Anne Tidaback. “The Human Form in the Poetry and Art of William Blake.” DAI, XXX (1969), 1987-8A. Columbia Ph.D., 1967.
Printed as Anne Kostelanetz Mellor, Blake’s Human Form Divine (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1974). She has also published 1 article (15 pp., 1971) on Blake.
Kreman, Kathryn Rebecca. “The Imagination of the Resurrection: The Poetic Continuity and Conversion of a Religious Motif in Donne, Blake, and Yeats.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 5366A. Brandeis Ph.D., 1970.
Printed as The Imagination of the Resurrection: The Poetical Continuity of a Religious Motif in Donne, Blake, and Yeats. (Lewisburg [Pennsylvania], 1972). “Chapter III [‘Blake’s Fourfold Resurrection and Christianity of the Imagination’] (the dissertation’s center) considers Blake’s unifying mythology of the Four Zoa’s resurrection as an appropriation of the imagination.”
Larson, Gary Dean. “The Role of God in Blake’s Later Vision: The Fall and the Apocalypse.” DA, XXVIII (1968), 5059-60A. Emory Ph.D., 1967.
Lechay, Daniel T. “The Escape from the Lonely Dell: Studies in Spenser, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Blake.” DAI XXXVI (1975), 2220A. Iowa Ph.D., 1975.
Applies “three interrelated dicta of William Blake” to Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Spenser’s “Muiopotmos,” Wordsworth’s “Matthew” poems, and Blake’s “Little Girl Lost” and “Found.”
Lefcowitz, Barbara Freedgood. “The Shaping Flame: Self, Nature and Madness in the Poetry of Christopher Smart and William Blake.” DAI, XXXI (1970), 4125-6A. Maryland Ph.D., 1970.
“Their poetry seems strongly to counter the possibility of madness.” She has published 2 articles (27 pp., 1972-74) on Blake.
Lemaitre, Henri. “Les Illustrations pour le Livre de Job par William Blake.” Paris Ph.D., 1953.
He published 2 articles (15 pp., 1959-71) on Blake.
Lento, Thomas Vincent. “The Epic Consciousness in Four Romantic and Modern Epics by Blake, Byron, Eliot and Hart Crane.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 7911A. Iowa Ph.D., 1974.
Blake’s Vala and Byron’s Don Juan indicate “that both the conception of the epic hero and the vision of a desirable society changed in the Romantic age.”
Leonard, Harris Kieth. “William Blake and ‘The Mental Traveller’.” DAI, XXXVIII (1978), 6743-4A. Howard Ph.D., 1976.
“The purpose of this dissertation is to provide both a review of criticism on ‘The Mental Traveller’ and an interpretation of the poem.”
Lesnick, Henry G. “Blake’s Antithetical Vision: A Study of the Structure of Jerusalem.” DAI, XXX (1969), 1987A. Columbia Ph.D., 1969.
He has published 2 articles (30 pp., 1969-71) on Blake.
Levitt, Annette Esther Shandler. “The Poetry and Thought of William Blake in Joyce Cary’s The Horse’s Mouth.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 4778-9A. Pennsylvania State Ph.D., 1970.
“Ultimately he [Cary] re-creates for us the entire Blake myth-complex.”
Lindberg, Bo. William Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job. (Åbo [Finland], 1973) Acta Academiae Aboensis, Ser.A: Humaniora: Humanistiska Vetenskaper, Socialvetenskaper och Juridik, Teologi, Vol. XLVI. Åbo Ph.D., 1973.
A major work. He has also published 3 articles (42 pp., 1968-74) on Blake.
Lipa, Charles Buell. “The Critical Theory of William Blake.” Cornell Ph.D., 1940.
Digested in pp. 33-36 of Cornell University Abstracts of Theses (Ithaca, 1941).
Long, Kay Parkhurst. “Unity in William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience: A Review and Discussion.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 2884A. Tulsa Ph.D., 1970.
It includes “a survey of criticism” and “a reading.” She has published 4 articles on Blake (11 pp., 1969-75) and is co-founder and editor of Blake Studies (1968 ff.).
Lowenstein, Amy. “Annals of the Poor: Social Fact and Artistic Response in Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Crabbe, Blake, Burns.” DAI, XXIX (1969), 4006-7A. New York University Ph.D., 1968.
Their responses “to the situation of the laboring poor.”
Lowery, Margaret Ruth. “William Blake’s Poetical Sketches 1783.” Yale Ph.D., 1935.
Printed in Windows of the Morning: A Critical Study of William Blake’s Poetical Sketches, 1783 (New Haven & London, 1940) Yale Studies in English Volume XCIII. Reprinted (N.Y., 1970). A pioneering study of Blake’s sources, particularly in the 18th Century. She also published 3 articles on Blake (43 pp., 1936-49).
Lowry, Mark Daniel. “Relationship of Design, Color, and Text in the Stirling-Keir Copy of William Blake’s Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 2850A. Texas Ph.D., 1975.
Machin, N. P. F. “The Influence of the Visual Arts and of Art-Theories in Romantic Poetry with Special Reference to James Usher, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats.” London M.Phil., 1967.
Mandell, Robert. “The Emergence of Los within Blake’s Archetypal Dialectic.” DAI, XXXIII (1973), 4354A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1972.
“Where does Los begin and how does he evolve?”
begin page 237 | ↑ back to topMarks, Mollyanne Kauffman. “Despair and Desire: A Study of William Blake’s Jerusalem and its Relation to Poetic Tradition.” DAI, XXXII (1972), 6987A. Yale Ph.D., 1971.
“Blake was deliberately working within a tradition of ‘true poetry’” in all his poetry. She has published 2 articles on Blake (36 pp., 1974-76).
Masterson, Donald Joseph. “The Method of Openness and the Theme of Love in the Early Poetry of William Blake.” Illinois Ph.D., 1975. See DAI, XXXVI (1976), 6117A.
Blake’s poetry is “complex, ambiguous, richly connotative, or, in a word, open” (thesis p. 3); the thesis is really on two discrete subjects, Openness and Love.
Mathews, Lawrence Mackay. “The Stems of Generation: The Figure of the Victim in the Poetry of William Blake.” British Columbia Ph.D., 1976. See DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 285A.
A responsible critical work.
McClellan, Jane Martha. “William Blake’s Concept of Man in The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 4371-2A. Florida State Ph.D., 1976.
She has published an article on Blake (14 pp., 1977).
McCord, James David. “William Blake’s Experiments in Illuminated Printing: 1793-1795.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 4142-3A. California (Santa Barbara) Ph.D., 1977.
“This thesis considers William Blake’s experiments and achievements as poet, illustrator, designer, engraver, printer, and watercolorist . . . based upon intensive examination of most copies of the original books.”
McGowan, James Denise. “Rising Glories: A Study of William Blake’s Poetical Sketches.” DAI, XXIX (1969), 2221A. Rutgers Ph.D., 1968.
“An attempt to describe and account for a consistency of imagery.”
Meissner-Weichert, Hildegund. “William Blakes Konzeption des ewigen Evangeliums: Ein Beitrag zum Verstaendnis seiner prophet. Buecher.” Freiburg Dissertation, 1955.
Middleman, Louis Isaac. “William Blake and the Form of Error: Satiric Craft in the Engraved Minor Prophecies.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 2947A. Pittsburgh Ph.D., 1974.
“The formulation of error . . . provides in fact the underlying technique in these poems, which are thus seen to be radically satirical” and also “as a unified satiric whole.” He has published 1 article on Blake (1 p., 1971).
Minnick, Thomas Ludwig. “On Blake and Milton: An Essay in Literary Relationship.” DAI, XXXIV (1973), 2641A. Ohio State Ph.D., 1973.
“A case study in the varieties of literary relationship.” He has published 4 articles on Blake (10 pp., 1970-73).
Mitchell, Jeffrey David. “Blake’s Milton as a Problem of Conscience.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 1113-4A. Columbia Ph.D., 1973.
He has published 1 article on Blake (10 pp., 1974).
Mitchell, O. S. “The Child in the Works of William Blake in the Context of Contemporary Life and Thought.” London Ph.D., 1968.
Mitchell, William John Thomas. “Blake’s Composite Art: The Relationship of Text and Illustration in the Illuminated Poetry of William Blake.” DAI, XXIX (1969), 1874A. Johns Hopkins Ph.D., 1968.
Traces a “dialectic” relationship in Thel, Urizen, and Jerusalem. He has published a book (1978) and five articles (97 pp., 1969-77) on Blake.
Moore, Donald Keith. “An Annotated Edition of William Blake’s Europe.” DAI, XXXIV (1973), 282A. State University of New York (Stony Brook) Ph.D., 1972.
He has published 1 collaborative book (1973) and 1 article on Blake (11 pp., 1972).
Moyer, Patricia. “William Blake, Critic of Literature and Art.” Nottingham Ph.D., 1964.
Mueller, Kurt. “William Blake als Vorlaeufer der englishen Romantik.” Marburg Ph.D., 1922.
Nanavutty, Piloo. “Some Eastern Influences on William Blake’s Prophetic Books.” Cambridge University Ph.D., 1939. See Cambridge University Abstracts of Dissertations, During the Academical Year 1938-1939 (1940), 73.
“The purpose of this dissertation has been to investigate further the Gnostic, Cabbalistic, and Hindu influences on William Blake’s Prophetic Books.” She has published 4 articles (24 pp., 1937-69) on Blake.
Nathan, Norman. Prince William B.: The Philosophical Conceptions of William Blake. New York University Ph.D., 1947. Published Abridgment (N.Y., 1949).
Printed as a book (Paris, 1975), Studies in English Literature Volume C. A work of little merit. The 1975 book does not refer to the previous dissertation or publication, remarks truly that “footnotes are invisible” and “The arguments of scholars . . . are likewise not included” (p. 7) and concludes that “the basic philosophy of William Blake” is “use your imagination” (p. 16). He has published 3 articles on Blake (5 pp., 1950-60).
Natoli, Joseph Philip. “A Study of Blake’s Contraries with Reference to Jung’s Theory of Individuation.” DAI, XXXIV (1973), 3351-2A. State University of New York (Albany) Ph.D., 1973.
Nelson, John Walter. “Blake’s Minor Prophecies: A Study of the Development of His Major Prophetic Mode.” DAI, XXX (1971), 3514A. Ohio State University Ph.D., 1970.
Covers America to Book of Los. He has published 1 article (9 pp., 1975) on Blake.
Noer, Philip Douglas. “The Rhetorical Structure of Milton: An Introduction to the Reading of Blake’s Major Prophecies as Poetry.” DAI, XXXI (1971), begin page 238 | ↑ back to top 5418A. Minnesota Ph.D., 1970.
Milton “is a superbly constructed work of art.” “The key to the structure of the poem is the principle of the arch form.”
Noll, Jacqueline Ann. “Old Testament Prophecy in Blake’s Lambeth Poems.” DAI, XXXVIII (1978), 5500A. Maryland Ph.D., 1977.
It includes identifications of “Blake’s borrowings and use of biblical material.”
Nurmi, Martin Karl. “Blake’s Doctrine of Contraries: A Study in Visionary Metaphysics.” Minnesota Ph.D., 1954. See DA, XIV (1954), 977-8A.
He has published 3 books (1957-75) and 5 articles (73 pp., 1956-69) on Blake.
O’Brien, Michael William. “Between Language and Voice: A Study of Aesthetic Experimentation in Blake, Whitman, Cummings, and Concrete Poetry.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 6985A. Illinois Ph.D., 1973.
A 177-page essay concentrating, in the Blake section, on the Songs.
Ogawa, Jiro. Mushin to Keiken no Uta Kenkyu: A Study on William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Kyoto, 1950).
A thesis in Japanese. He has also published two more books (1972-73) and 10 articles (115 pp., 1948-75) on Blake.
O’Hare, Susan Carol. “Going Wonder-Ways: Sacrality and Skepticism in British Romantic Poetry.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 2203A. Rice Ph.D., 1976.
On heirophany in Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats.
Ostriker, Alicia S. “William Blake: A Study in Poetic Technique.” DA, XXIV (1964), 3754-5A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1963.
Printed as Vision and Verse in William Blake (Madison & Milwaukee, 1965). A sensitive and responsible commentary on Blake’s prosody. She has published an edition of Blake (1977).
Paley, Morton David. “Energy and the Imagination: A Study of the Development of Blake’s Thought.” DA, XXVIII (1967), 689-90A. Columbia Ph.D., 1964.
Printed (Oxford, 1970). As Blake’s myth develops, Orc (energy) diminishes in importance and Los (imagination) becomes central. He has also edited three books on Blake (1969-78), published 16 articles on him (213 pp., 1962-78), and founded and edited Blake Newsletter (1967 ff.).
Pananides, Dean Nicholas. “Vision and Form in William Blake’s Illuminated Poetry.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 7765-6A. California (Santa Barbara) Ph.D., 1976.
On “the relationship between vision and form.”
Pederson, Glenn Malvern. “The Religion of William Blake: Interpreted from the Fall and Regeneration of Albion, Divine Man in the Myth of Blake.” DA, XIV (1954), 830A. Washington Ph.D., 1954.
He published 1 article (11 pp., 1958) on Blake.
Pedrini, Lura Nancy Gregory. “Serpent Imagery and Symbolism in the Major English Romantic Poets: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats.” DA, XX (1959), 2277A. Texas Ph.D., 1958.
She published 2 articles (120 pp., 1960-61) which are probably the same as her thesis.
Peterfreund, Stuart Samuel. “A Program Toward Prophecy: Eighteenth-Century Influences on the Poetry of William Blake.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 3700A. Washington Ph.D., 1974.
He has published an essay on Blake (14 pp., 1974).
Peterson, Jane E. “Metric and Syntactic Experimentation in Blake’s Prophecies of 1788-1795.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 3661A. Arkansas Ph.D., 1975.
Examines “the opening lines of each of these prophecies.” She also published an article on Blake (13 pp., 1973).
Petter, Henri. Enitharmon: Stellung und Aufgabe eines Symbols in dichterischen Gesamtwerk William Blakes (Bern, 1957) Swiss Studies in English, 42. Band.
A 160-page doctoral dissertation of 1956.
Phillips, Michael Curtis. “The Poetical Sketches of William Blake: A definitive text, the reputation of the poems from 1783 to the present, and an interpretation of their meaning.” University of Exeter Ph.D., 1969.
He has co-edited a book (1973) and published 3 articles (38 pp., 1970-73) on Blake.
Pierce, Hazel Beasley. “A Critical Study of William Blake’s Europe.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 5372-3A. Nebraska Ph.D., 1970.
Ray, William Ernest. “William Blake and the Critical Development of William Butler Yeats.” DAI, XXXII (1971), 2652A. North Carolina Ph.D., 1971.
“Blake remained centrally important to Yeats throughout his critical career.” He has published an essay on Blake (11 pp., 1973).
Read, Dennis Myron. “William Blake and The Grave.” Wisconsin (Milwaukee) Ph.D., 1976. See DAI, XXXVII (1977), 6478A.
A sound, responsible study. He has published a note (2 pp.) on Blake in 1977.
Rhodes, Jack Lee. “A Study in the Vocabulary of English Romanticism: Joy in the Poetry of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and Byron.” DA, XXVII (1967), 3434A. Texas Ph.D., 1966.
“Blake’s use of Joy is distinguished primarily by the wide variety of contexts and associations in which he places the term.”
Riede, David George. “Swinburne: A Study of Romantic Mythmaking.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 2204A. Virginia Ph.D., 1975.
“The second chapter is a detailed examination of Swinburne’s critical essay on Blake,” discussing “his important misreadings of Blake with respect to . . . his own poetry.”
Roe, Albert S. “William Blake’s Illustrations to the Divine Comedy of Dante.” Harvard Ph.D., 1950.
Printed as Blake’s Illustrations to the Divine begin page 239 | ↑ back to top Comedy (Princeton, 1953). Second Printing (Princeton, 1967). A sound study of the ways in which Blake’s own ideas and Giant Figures influenced his illustrations to Dante. He has also published a catalogue (1965) and 2 articles (73 pp., 1957-69) on Blake.
Rollins, Mark Edwin. “The Necessity of Art: A Study of William Blake.” DAI, XXV (1975), 6156A. Massachusetts Ph.D., 1974.
“A study of William Blake’s philosophy of social and cultural reform.”
Rose, Edward J. “Mental Forms Creating: A Study in Blake’s Thought and Symbols.” Toronto Ph.D., 1963. See DA, XXV (1964), 1923-4A.
“The thesis contends that Blake’s metaphors, images, and symbols describe the creative process” (p. ii of the thesis). He has published 24 articles (344 pp., 1964-77) on Blake.
Rosenblum, Robert. “The International Style of 1800: A Study in Linear Abstraction.”[e] New York University Ph.D., 1956.
A work of major importance, in which Blake is considered on pp. 99-114. (The dissertation was published as Transformations in Late Eighteenth-Century Art [1967; 1969; 1970] without most of the Blake section.) He has also published an article on Blake (24 pp., 1975).
Roudalphi, Marthe-Augusta-Paulette. “William Blake: Rapports de l’Art et de la Pensée.” Paris Ph.D., 1948.
Rudd, Margaret E. “William Blake and W. B. Yeats: A Study of Poetry and Mystical Vision.” Reading University Ph.D., 1951.
Printed as Divided Image: A Study of William Blake and W. B. Yeats (London, 1953). Reprinted (N.Y., 1970). The thesis is that Blake was a mystic and Yeats a magician. She also published another book on Blake (1956).
Ruhlman, John Arthur. “The Development of Los through the Prophecies of William Blake.” California (Berkeley) Ph.D., 1974.
Ryan, Robert Emmett. “The Structure and Function of the Cosmogonic Myth in William Blake’s Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXVII (1976), 339A. Case Western Reserve Ph.D., 1975.
He has published an article on Blake (2 pp., 1974).
Sabri-Tabrizi, Gholen Reza. “The Idea of Negation and Contrary Progression in Blake.” Edinburgh Ph.D., 1970.
Perhaps this is his work printed as The ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ of William Blake (N.Y., 1973), the “main aim” of which “is to present the whole of Blake in a coherent and comprehensible way,” with emphasis upon Blake’s “consistent materialism” and his “social context” (p. vii).
Sachs, Myron. “The Development of Blake’s Extended Myth.” DAI, XXXIII (1972), 2903A. Tufts Ph.D., 1971.
Seems to be mostly about Tiriel and The French Revolution.
Salter, Thomas Norman. “Toward a Symbology of Form in the Illuminations of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 3737A. Massachusetts Ph.D., 1975.
Samuel, G. “Blake’s View of Milton and Edward Young.” London Ph.D., 1970.
Sanders, Jon Barry. “The Desire of Man: A Reading of Blake’s The Four Zoas.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 3698A. Oregon Ph.D., 1974.
Uses “the application of allegory as an interpretive process of reading.”
Sanzo, Eileen Barbara. “William Blake: Poet of the City in the Industrial Age.” DAI, XXXIII (1972), 764-5A. New York University Ph.D., 1971.
“The study attempts to show how industry and its cities shaped his language,” particularly in Vala, Milton, and Jerusalem. She has published an article on Blake (15 pp., 1971).
Schaupp, Roscoe Frederick. “Blake’s ‘Correction’ of Milton in Poem and Picture.” Ohio State Ph.D., 1934. See Abstracts of Dissertations, Ohio State University, No. 15 (1934), 171-180.
Schicker, Stephen Mathias. “The Rainbow Beneath the Ground: A Study of the Descent into Hell Metaphor in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Gérard de Nerval’s Aurelia, and Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer.” DAI, XXXI (1969), 369A. Syracuse Ph.D., 1969.
“The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that . . . [the three works] redefine the nature of the descent into hell as part of a process leading to psychic regeneration,” foreshadowing Jung.
Schlieper, Reinhold. “William Blake, Philosopher: An Analysis of the Metaphysical System Underlying His Poetry.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 6158-9A. Ball State Ed. D., 1974.
Blake is “a lucid and consistent thinker.”
Scholz, Joachim Josef. “Blake and Novalis: A Comparison of Romanticism’s High Arguments.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 4808A. Chicago Ph.D., 1977.
Blake and Novalis are “surprisingly similar” in their “arguments on . . . the effectiveness of poetry in life.”
Schorer, Mark. “William Blake as a Radical.” Wisconsin Ph.D., 1936. See Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations, University of Wisconsin, I (1937), 288-290.
Printed as William Blake: The Politics of Vision (N.Y., 1946). Reprinted (N.Y., 1959). An important examination of the radical element in Blake’s poetry and society. He also published 7 articles on Blake (43 pp., 1935-46).
Schotz, Myra Glazer. “The Altering Eye: William Blake and the Art of Parallax: An Approach to The Four Zoas.” DAI, XXXVI (1975), 910-11A. Brandeis Ph.D., 1974.
Schuchard, Marsha Keith Manatt.[e] “Freemasonry, Secret Societies, and the Continuity of the Occult begin page 240 | ↑ back to top Traditions in English Literature.” Texas Ph.D., 1975. See DAI, XXXVI (1975), 2792-3A.
A gallimaufrey of cobbled coincidences “based largely on circumstantial evidence” (p. 425) is used to place Blake in a “Masonic” context (pp. 307-550); the compasses of The Ancient of Days and the “Universal Brotherhood” of Milton are Masonic (pp. 465, 472).
Scott, Janis Marie McAtee. “The Stubborn Structure of the Language: A Study of the Syntax of William Blake.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 5148-9A. Mississippi Ph.D., 1973.
A 147-page “computer-assisted statistical study . . . written in COBOL for use on the Dec10 system.”
Shain, Ronald. “A Sociological Study of the Romantic Imagination: Blake’s Mythic Conception of Man’s Fall Into Outer Selfhood.” California (Santa Barbara) Ph.D. in Sociology, 1976.
According to the abstract, “The findings of this study provide sociology with a new speculative model for resolving . . . why certain writers and artists of the Romantic age experienced extreme feelings of self-estrangement, even though they were creatively fulfilled by their work, and were not faced with the collapse of established values and institutions.”
Shea, James P. “Blake’s Archetypal Tyger: A More Comprehensive View.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 2243A. Marquette University Ph.D., 1974.
A 143-page effort to give “a more comprehensive view [of ‘The Tyger’] . . . than any of Blake’s critics have thus far put forth” does not seem more comprehensive, in the abstract.
Sheraw, C. Darrel. “Byron and the Course of Romantic Satire.” DAI, XXXI (1970), 2940A. Ohio Ph.D., 1970.
It places “an emphasis on the work of Blake and Byron.”
Shook, Margaret Lulu. “Visionary Form: Blake’s Prophetic Art and the Pictorial Tradition.” DA, XXVII (1967), 4265A. California (Berkeley) Ph.D., 1966.
Shroyer, Richard James. “Studies in the Chronology and Contexts of Blake’s Early Poems: The First Decade, 1783-1793.” Toronto Ph.D., 1975. See DAI, XXXVII (1977), 6513-4A.
“In sum, the results of the study are extremely modest.” He published a note on Blake in 1977 (4 pp.).
Singh, Gurbhagat. “Meditations on William Blake: An Experiential Approach to his Poetry.” DAI, XXXVII (1976), 286A. California (Santa Cruz) Ph.D. for The History of Consciousness, 1974.
“The argument of this work is that Blake not only talked about the ‘Edenic Body,’ but he also wrote his poetry with it. His poem [sic] commands to be read bodily. . . .”
Skelton, Susan. “Blake, Novalis and Norval: The Poetics of the Apocalypse: A Study of Blake’s Milton, Novalis’ Hymnen an die Nacht and Heinrich von Ofterdingen and Norval’s Aurelia.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 7247A. Southern California Ph.D., 1973.
A 153-page essay arguing merely that they “have essentially the same assumptions. . . .”
Smith, Catherine Findley. “Pictorial Language in The Four Zoas by Blake.” DAI, XXXIII (1973), 5142A. North Carolina Ph.D., 1972. 142 pages.
It “is a verbal organization of images of sight, sound, and movement.”
Smith, William Marion. “Four Songs on Texts by William Blake. [Original Composition.]” DA, XXVIII (1967), 254A. Floride State Ph.D., 1966.
Set for soprano and orchestra.
Spicer, Harold Otis. “The Chariot of Fire: A Study of William Blake’s Use of Biblical Typology in the Minor Prophecies.” DA, XXIII (1962), 2141A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1962.
He published an article on Blake (18 pp., 1967).
Spinks, Cary William, Jr. “The Valley of Vision: A Study of Los in Blake’s Prophecies.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 4136A. Nebraska Ph.D., 1970.
“This study explores the significance of Los in terms of his role as the Creative Imagination.”
Stanculescu, Liana P. “William Blake and the English Renaissance.” DAI, XXXVII (1976), 2903A. Miami Ph.D., 1976.
“His strongest affinities are with the hermetical seventeenth century.”
Stavrou, Constantine N. “William Blake & D. H. Lawrence: A Comparative Study on the Similarity of Their Thought.” DA, XII (1952), 430-1A. Buffalo Ph.D., 1952.
He published 2 articles on Blake (11 pp., 1955-56).
Stein, Kenneth. “Blake’s Apocalyptic Poetry: A Study of the Genre of Blake’s Prophetic Books.” DAI, XXX (1969), 2500A. Brandeis Ph.D., 1969.
A study of “their indebtedness to the apocalyptic books of the Bible and the intertestamental era.”
Steiner, Henry-York. “The Emanation and its Spectres: William Blake’s Theory of Poetry.” DA, XXIV (1964), 4684A. Oregon Ph.D., 1963.
A 150-page argument that “Blake’s poetry was Romantic in nature.”
Stevenson, Stanley Warren. “The Creation Motif in Romantic Poetry and Theory with Particular Reference to the Myth of Blake and the Poetic Theory of Blake and Coleridge.” DA, XIX (1958), 1368-9A. Northwestern Ph.D., 1958.
Printed as Divine Analogy: A Study of the Creation Motif in Blake and Coleridge (Salzburg, 1972). Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Romantic Reassessment [No.] 25. He has also published 3 articles on Blake (44 pp., 1968-77).
Stevenson, William Handforth. “A Study of Blake’s Song of Liberty, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America and Europe.” Oxford B. Litt., 1956.
A responsible study. He has published 9 articles on Blake (60 pp., 1957-73).
begin page 241 | ↑ back to topStruck, Wilhelm. Der Einfluss Jacob Boehmes auf die englische Literature des 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1936) Neue Deutsche Forschungen Abteilung englische Philologie. Band 6. Rostock dissertation, 1935.
Tandon, Jagdish Narain. “The influence on the poetry of William Blake [sic].” University of Agra Ph.D., 1967.
Tannenbaum, Leslie Warren. “Dark Visions of Torment: Symbol and Structure in William Blake’s The Book of Urizen.” DAI, XXXIII (1973), 6328A. Wisconsin Ph.D., 1972.
He has published one article on Blake (14 pp., 1973).
Tayler, Irene. “Visionary Forms Dramatic: William Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Thomas Gray.” Stanford Ph.D., 1967. See DA, XXIX (1968), 881A.
Printed in Blake’s Illustrations to the Poems of Gray (Princeton, 1971). A persuasive commentary on Blake’s 116 designs. She has also published 4 articles on Blake (86 pp., 1971-74).
Taylor, Clyde Russel. “William Blake and the Ideology of Art.” DA, XXIX (1968), 277A. Wayne State Ph.D., 1967.
He has published one article on Blake (47 pp., 1968).
Taylor, Gary James. “A Critical Edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell with Annotations.” DAI, XXXIII (1972), 2345-6A. Arkansas Ph.D., 1972.
The 2 volumes include a facsimile of copy I and an anthology of criticism of the Marriage. He has published 1 article on Blake (1 p., 1973).
Taylor, J. A. “William Blake: The Radical Context: A Study in the Relationship Between Blake’s Work and the Popular Radical Culture, 1790-1830.” Leeds Ph.D., 1970.
Taylor, Peter Alan. “A Reading of Blake’s Milton.” DAI, XXX (1969), 737-8A. Connecticut Ph.D., 1969.
“Blake is an active participant” in the poem. He has published 2 articles on Blake (25 pp., 1969-74).
Taylor, Richard Loring. “William Blake’s Cosmogonic Myth: The Irony of Origins.” California (Santa Barbara) Ph.D., 1970.
According to the abstract, it concludes that “In Jerusalem Blake abandons creation myth entirely.”
Taylor, Ronald Clayton. “The Semantics of Time in the Later Poetry of William Blake: A Stylistic Study.” DAI, XXXVII (1977), 5857A. California (Berkeley) Ph.D., 1976.
Deals especially with “the broader applications of temporal semantics.” He published an essay on Blake (13 pp.) in 1975.
Tebbetts, Terrell Louis. “A Critical Study of Blake’s America.” DAI, XXXII (1971), 987-8A. Arkansas Ph.D., 1971.
“The essence of the poem is in” the word “prophecy.”
Tolley, Michael J. “William Blake’s Use of the Bible.” London Ph.D., 1974.
Vol. II (pp. 267-522) is a checklist of biblical references. He has published 18 articles on Blake (154 pp., 1962-74).
Trent, Robert J. “The Case Against Death: Transformation of ‘Generation’ in the Writings of William Blake.” DAI, XXXVII (1976), 1573A. New York University Ph.D., 1976.
Blake’s attitude toward death is traced through three stages.
Tzougros, Penelope Stephanie. “Hopkins and Blake: A New Heaven and a New Earth.” Toronto Ph.D., 1977.
Umetsu, Narumi. A Study of William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Blake Kenkyu [Studies] (Tokyo, 1963).
A 383-page doctoral dissertation in Japanese. He has also published 1 translation (1970) and 9 articles on Blake (72+ pp., 1955-70).
Unruh, Donald John. “Jerusalem: The Primitive Christian Vision of William Blake.” DAI, XXXI (1971), 1819A. Southern California Ph.D., 1970.
Jerusalem “follows ‘primitive Christianity’ rather than the official Christian tradition.”
Viscoli, Lois Katherine. “The Promethean Archetype.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 6114A. New Mexico Ph.D., 1975.
“Blake and Shelley dramatically illuminated the core of the archetype.”
Vogler, Thomas Allen. “Preludes to Vision: The Epic Venture in Blake, Wordsworth, Keats and Hart Crane.” Yale Ph.D., 1964.
Printed as a book (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1971). Chapter 3 (“Blake: Mental Fight,” pp., 39-59) is an intelligent close reading of Milton as a “prelude” to Jerusalem.
Wagenknecht, David A. “William Blake and the Idea of Pastoral.” Sussex D. Phil., 1971.
Published as Blake’s Night: William Blake and the Idea of Pastoral (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1973). A laborious analysis of Spenserian pastoral elements in Blake’s early work and Miltonic ones in the later poems. He has also published one article on Blake (1 p., 1974).
Walter, Jakob. William Blakes Nachleben in der englischen Literature des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Schaffhausen, 1925). Reprinted (Schaffhausen, 1927). Zurich Ph.D.
Wang, Alfred Shi-pu. “The Imagery in Blake’s Minor Prophecies.” DA, XXVIII (1968), 3652A. Tulane Ph.D., 1967.
Ward, Marney Jean McLaughlin. “Text and Design in Blake’s Developing Myth.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 3704-5A. British Columbia Ph.D., 1974.
Examines “a number of crucial motifs” in Songs, Urizen, and Jerusalem. She has published 1 article on Blake (1 p., 1972).
Wardle, J. “Myth and Image in Three Romantics: A Study of Blake, Shelley and Yeats.” Queen’s begin page 242 | ↑ back to top (Belfast) Ph.D., 1970.
She has produced 2 articles on Blake (4 pp., 1967-68).
Warner, Nicholas Oliver. “Blake’s Iconic Mode: Tradition and Transformation in the Works of William Blake.” DAI, XXXIX (1978), 877A. California (Berkeley) Ph.D., 1977.
Studies “how Blake not only adapts but transforms traditional images and symbols.”
Warner, William Robert. “The Composite Art of Blake’s ‘Laughing Song.’” University of the Pacific Ph.D., 1975.
Waters, Gregory Leo. “I. Conrad Aiken: A Basis for Criticism. II. G. T. ‘s ‘Worthless Enterprise’: A Study of the Narrator in Gascoigne’s ‘The Adventures of Master F. J.’ III. Blake and Rossetti.’” DAI, XXV (1974), 3775-6A. Rutgers Ph.D., 1974.
“Rossetti seems to have learned little from him [Blake],” and his work is “one-dimensional.”
Waters, Louis Addison, Jr. “The Idea of Nature in the Poetry of William Blake.” DA, XXI (1961), 265-6A. Columbia Ph.D., 1961.
Shows seven stages in Blake’s treatment of Nature: 1) Innocence; 2) Sex; 3) Energy; 4) Imagination; 5) Experience; 6) Deceit; 7) Restraint.
Watson, Alan McCabe. “William Blake’s Illustrated Writings: The Early Period.” DAI, XXX (1969), 1538A. New Mexico Ph.D., 1969.
“The writer has simply tried to see them [Blake’s illustrations] suggest to the imagination when confronting them at close quarters.” He has published 1 article on Blake (9 pp., 1973).
Waxler, Robert Phillip. “William Blake: The Sexual Dynamics of his Early Illuminated Works.” DAI, XXXVII (1976), 995-6A. State University of New York (Stony Brook) Ph.D., 1976.
Welch, Dennis Martin. “William Blake’s Apocalypse: A Theo-Psychological Interpretation.” DAI, XXXIII (1972), 736A. Southern California Ph.D., 1972.
Attempt “to show how Blake sought to permanently escape history.” He has published 2 articles on Blake (4 pp., 1973).
White, Helen C. “The Mysticism of William Blake.” Wisconsin Ph.D., 1924.
Printed (Madison, 1927) University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, Number 23. Reprinted (N.Y., 1964). A close comparison of Blake’s works and life with the mystical tradition leads to the conclusion that he “is not a great mystic in any sense that means anything.”
White, Mary Elizabeth. “Woman’s Triumph: A Study of the Changing Symbolic Values of the Female in the Works of William Blake.” DAI, XXXIII (1972), 2348A. Washington Ph.D., 1972.
Whitehead, Frederick Allan. “Studies in the Structure of European History in Blake’s Epics.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 7927-8A. Columbia Ph.D., 1972.
“It is the thesis of this study that the mythic-psychological and the social-economic levels of meaning are mutually dependent in Blake’s prophetic epics, and that the main structure of the epics is the representation of the entire history of European man.” The thesis is summarized in his “William Blake and Radical Tradition.” Chapter 10 (pp. 191-214) of Weapons of Criticism: Marxism in American and the Literary Tradition. Ed. Norman Rudich. Palo Alto, California, 1976.
Wild, David W. “The Emergence of Literacy (1780-1860): William Blake, William Cobbett, Charles Dickens.” Washington (Seattle) Ph.D., 1972.
Wieland-Burston, Joanne Barbara. “Blake in France: The Poet and the Painter as Seen by French Critics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” DAI, XXXIX (1978), 914A. Vanderbilt Ph.D., 1977.
“Blake semble avoir peu marqué la littérature française.”
Wilfong, Susan Dupaul. “‘The Architect Divine’: The Evolution of Blake’s Verbal and Visual Imagery of Architecture.” Harvard Ph.D., 1976.
Wilkes, John Edwin, III. “Aeolian Visitations and the Harp Defrauded: Essays on Donne, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Flaubert, Heine and James Wright.” DAI, XXXV (1974), 1129A. California (Santa Cruz) Ph.D., 1973.
Close readings to discover and interpret “signal instances of Romantic poets [sic] testing their poetic materials in order to determine whether, and for how long, the self-generated and self-contained worlds they are in the act of creating can be sustained.”
Wilkinson, Carolyn. “Perception, Action and Character: The Structure of Blake’s Jerusalem.” DAI, XXXV (1975), 1638-9A. Michigan State Ph.D., 1974.
She is “primarily concerned with the question of perception in Jerusalem, with what characters perceive and with how they act according to their perceptions,” with “a plate by plate analysis of the narrative events.”
Wills, James Thomas. “William Blake’s Designs for Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.” Toronto Ph.D., 1975. See DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 3525A.
A careful survey of Bunyan illustrations (1680-1824) and analysis of Blake’s Bunyan designs, concluding that Christian’s journey is circular; there are 193 plates. He has published 1 article on Blake (6 pp., 1973).
Wilson, H. C. “Blake’s Criticism and Painting of the Canterbury Pilgrims.” Washington Ph.D., 1941; see Abstracts of [Washington] Theses, V (1941), 98-99.
Wilson, Patrick Seymour. “A Study of the Proper Names mentioned in Blake’s Poetry and Prose.” 3 vols. Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand) Ph.D., 1952.
begin page 243 | ↑ back to topWilson, William Lewis, Jr. “Process and Imagination: The Romantic Absolute in Blake and D. H. Lawrence.” DAI, XXXVIII (1977), 1421A. Emory Ph.D., 1977.
Witke, Joanne Stauch. “The Empiricism of William Blake’s Metaphysics.” California (Berkeley) Ph.D., 1974.
Particularly concerned with his relationship with Berkeley. She has published 3 articles on Blake (29 pp., 1970-75).
Ziegelman, Lois Abrams. “William Blake: The Lineaments of History.” DAI, XXXIV (1974), 4223A. Brandeis Ph.D., 1973.
“The aim of this thesis is to trace the course of Blake’s reflections on the meaning of history”; Blake “can truly be considered a historian.”