An associate professor of English and Film studies and Canada Research Chair in English at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Julia M. Wright is the editor of The Missionary: An Indian Tale and the co-editor of Romanticism, History, and the Possibilities of Genre: Re-forming Literature, 1789-1837; Nervous Reactions: Victorian Recollections of Romanticism; and Captivating Subjects: Writing Confinement, Citizenship, and Nationhood in the Nineteenth Century.
Listed in: Literary Criticism · British Literature · Literature
Blake, Nationalism, and the Politics of Alienation
By Julia M. Wright
William Blake’s reputation as a staunch individualist is based in large measure on his repeated attacks on institutions and belief systems that constrain the individual’s imagination. Blake, however, rarely represents isolation positively, suggesting that the individual’s absolute freedom from communal pressures is not the ideal.
