[Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Twentieth Century Interpretations]
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Scheduled for imminent (I hope) publication: Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Twentieth Century Interpretations (Prentice-Hall), ed. M. D. Paley. It includes an introductory essay, six reprinted essays or chapters, and seven excerpts. The longer items are: Alicia Ostriker’s chapter on the prosody of the Songs, Foster Damon’s “The Initial Eden,” “The Vision of Innocence” by Martin Price [from To the Palace of Wisdon], “Infinite London” by David Erdman, “Blake’s Introduction to Experience” by Northrop Frye, and “Tyger of Wrath” by myself. The Erdman article, from Blake: Prophet, has been revised by the author; my own piece incorporates some minor corrections and emendations. The short excerpts vary from 1 to 4 pages in length and are mostly on individual poems; they are from books by Joseph H. Wicksteed, Robert F. Gleckner, Harold Bloom, Mark Schorer, Hazard Adams, and E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and from an article by Martin K. Nurmi. As I suppose is inevitable in such undertakings, I wished I had scope for at least several other articles. However, I had to be mindful of length, and also of the publisher’s wish not of include articles in two previously published Blake collections. (An exception was made for the Frye essay, which I considered indispensable to such a volume). I hope the resulting book will be useful to students.