NEWS
MLA Seminar
There will again be a seminar on Blake at this year’s MLA meeting in New York. The subject will be “Some Problems in Interpreting Blake’s Designs for L’Allegro and Il Penseroso.” John E. Grant will initiate the discussion; the chairman will be Morton Paley. Participants will find it convenient to bring with them a copy of Blake: The Mystic Genius by Adrian Van Sinderen (Syracuse, 1949), or John Milton, Poems in English, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (Bentley-Nurmi no. 314). The former has color reproductions of the pictures, the latter black-and-white ones. The pictures are also reproduced, much diminished, in E.J. Rose, “Blake’s Illustrations for Paradise Lost, L’Allegro, and Il Penseroso: A Thematic Reading,” Hartford Studies in Literature, II, 1 (Spring 1970), 40-67.
Some background reading which may also be of interest:
Marcia M. Pointon, Milton and English Art (Manchester, 1970).
John E. Grant, “The Haunted Stream at Sun-Set,” Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic, eds. Erdman and Grant (Princeton, 1970); also briefer remarks by E.J. Rose in the concluding article of the same volume [forthcoming in November].
Geoffrey Keynes, ed., The Engravings of William Blake: The Separate Plates (Dublin, 1956), for the two engraved states of the first design for L’Allegro.
The precise time and place of the seminar are not yet known; it will probably be held on the morning of December 28th or 29th. Those wishing to participate should write directly to Morton Paley, c/o the English Department at Berkeley, who will send out a notice giving the necessary information.