Shows
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldImagination and the pregnant mind in William Blake’s cosmogonyIn his early prophetic works, William Blake presents his own creation myth, which reinterprets Genesis and critically examines contemporary medical discourse on generation and birth.In this talk Annalise Volpone explores a specific trope that emerges from Blake’s depiction of imagination and (artistic) creation: partus mentis, the parturition of the mind. Annalisa Volpone is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Perugia. She specializes on modernism and romanticism; her research includes the intersections between literature and medicine in the Romantic period. She is currently working on a monograph on birth metaphors and imagination in...2025-05-0328 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldA Guide to William Blake's The Four ZoasBegun some time around 1797, Vala or The Four Zoas is William Blake's great unfinished masterpiece, an attempt to provide a complete mythology of Blake's universe of characters, Urizen, Los, Orc, Vala and many more. The poem has fascinated and perplexed readers ever since and, in this episode of Visionary, Professor Jason Whittaker is joined by Dr Annise Rogers who has worked in detail on Blake's epic. They discuss the conditions in which the poem was written, as well as provide some explanation as to its characters and significance.2025-04-1750 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldMirror Writing and Designing in William Blake’s Illuminated BooksIn 1789, Blake developed the relief etching technique which he described as “a method of Printing which combines the Painter and the Poet,” allowing him to simultaneously write and design on copper plates for his illuminated books. This process required Blake to write and design in reverse, leading him to develop his command of retrography. Consequently, what appears “forwards” on the printed page is the product of a “backwards” preparatory process. In this talk, Dr Camille Adnot analyses the workings of these reversed words on the printed page, examining the dynamics of reading text backwards, and the function that these words serve...2025-03-0826 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake and New Age MusicBlake famously begins Milton: A Poem with the call to "Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age!" That phrase has been connected to the "New Age" movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and Blake has long been recognized as an important influence on the poets and visual artists of that time, but it could be argued however, that it was a cohort of musicians that best manifested his vision for art during this era. Jacob Smith outlines a series of resonances between Blake and the first wave of New Age musicians, which includes Iasos, Suzanne Doucet, Stephen...2025-02-1519 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake, Gregory Bateson and David Lynch: Audiovisual Approaches to Blake ScholarshipJacob Smith discusses parts of his book, Bateson’s Alphabet: The ABCs of Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind. Bateson began his academic career as an anthropologist in the 1930s, collaborated with Margaret Mead on groundbreaking anthropological research utilizing photography and motion pictures, and participated in the founding conferences on cybernetics. After parting ways with Mead, Bateson embarked upon a series of research inquiries that moved across academic disciplines, culminating in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), a book that brought him a new level of public recognition and influence. Bateson was deeply influenced by the work of William Blak...2025-02-0821 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldBob Dylan and William BlakeBlakean song titles such as ‘Gates of Eden’ (1965) and ‘Every Grain of Sand’ (1981) have ensured that Blake’s influence on Dylan has long been taken for granted by fans, music writers and literary scholars - but how much Blake did Dylan actually know? In this podcast, Luke Walker that Dylan does indeed owe a deep and complex debt of influence to Blake, although it is a subject on which Dylan himself has often been evasive and contradictory, not only in public interviews but significantly also in private conversations with fellow Blakean poet-musicians Allen Ginsberg and Michael McClure.2025-01-2923 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldYeats, Blake and MysticismIn this episode of Visionary, Jason Whittaker is joined by the scholar Jodie Marley, whose work includes a study of W. B. Yeats's reception of Blake in mystical circles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In this wide-ranging discussion, they look at how Blake was adopted as a mystic and occultist, as well as the important work done by Yeats and his colleague Edwin John Ellis to edit the first collected works of William Blake.2025-01-1050 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldBarry Miles on Allen Ginsberg's Blake RecordingsBiographer of the Beats and co-founder of the counter-culture newspaper, International Times, Barry Miles joins Camila Oliveira in conversation about how, through Zapple Records which he set up with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, he came to record Allen Ginsberg's settings of the poetry of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In this fascinating discussion, he also reminisces as to how - with Ginsberg and filmmaker Barbara Rubin - he was instrumental in helping to bring about the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965.2024-11-1940 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldBlakean Spirituals: William Blake, Bob Dylan, and RaceJames Keery and Steve Clark begin with a discussion of the ‘song’ performed by ‘Tambourine Man’, which is often regarded as an invitation to Blakean ‘immortal moments’. If ‘the Ruins of Time build Mansions in Eternity’, in Dylan these have become ‘foggy ruins of time’, trading posts on a ‘windy beach’, where black captives may be ‘silhouetted by the sea’. It is also performed within the ‘love and theft’ tradition of blackface minstrelsy: Mr Tambo as a ‘ragged clown’, casting a ‘dancing spell’ upon ‘circus sands’. Race has become a hyper-sensitive issue in recent Blake studies. If Black lives matter, is any representation by a white art...2024-11-0528 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake and the SurrealistsWith its exploration of the unconscious via the dreamscapes of artists such as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dali, and a rejection of the kind of excessive rationalism that had boxed European countries into the horrors of the First World War, it would seem that Surrealism and William Blake were a match made in heaven - or a marriage made in hell. In this episode, Jason Whittaker explores some of the ways in which the Surrealists invoked Blake and explored his ideas and his status as a "complete artist" in their own work.2024-10-3018 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake's Visionary PhysicsRoger Whitson explores the ways in which Donald Ault and Bruno Latour can provide us with insights into Blake's experiments in visionary physics. This podcast explores the relations between science, art and aesthetics, not only the representation of science in art and photography, but also what the philosopher Latour calls the presentation or arrangement of facts.2024-10-1838 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake's VisionsBlake scholar David Worrall discusses his latest book, William Blake's Visions, which explores the ways in which what Blake referred to as his visions can be attributed to verifiable perceptual phenomena including visual hallucinations (some probably derived from migraine aura), and auditory and visual hallucinations derived from several types of synaesthesia. None of Blake's conditions were pathological, all of them have a degree of prevalence in modern populations. Blake has been celebrated as a ‘visionary,’ yet his ‘visions’ have been ignored for too long.2024-09-2930 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake at BARS 2024Sharon Choe is joined by other Blake scholars - Hannah McAuliffe, Jodie Marley, Jake Elliott and Annise rogers - to discuss the range of talks and papers on William Blake at 2024 British Association of Romanticism Studies conference and consider some of the futures for Blake studies.2024-09-2143 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldDark Angels: William Blake and Ridley ScottWilliam Blake has long been one of the many influences on the style and visuals of director Ridley Scott, most notably in his 2012 Alien: Prometheus, but also other films such as Blade Runner, Legend and Hannibal. In this podcast, Jason Whittaker explores how Ridley has used Blake, with particular emphasis on the Romantic artist's re-reading of Milton's Paradise Lost, which shaped Scott's vision of the Engineers as "dark angels".2024-09-0518 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake's Guide on How to be a VisionaryWhen most people think of William Blake, one of the first words they use is visionary. In this podcast, Jason Whittaker explores what that means in relation to Blake, and also how the Romantic artist gave a practical guide in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell on how to become a visionary poet.2024-08-1522 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldThe Left Hand Path: William Blake, Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman SpareWilliam Blake has been claimed by a number of esoteric and even occult thinkers and practitioners. At the end of his life, he was as much known for his series of Visionary Heads - apparitions of spirits and historical figures - and this made him attractive to later spiritualists in the Victorian era. In this podcast, Jason Whittaker explores how Blake was invoked by two more radical practitioners of magic: Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare.2024-08-0219 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldMapping Hell: Alasdair Gray and William BlakeOften hailed as "the Scottish William Blake", Alasdair Gray's love of both the graphic arts and written word does indeed owe much to his admiration for the Romantic poet and engraver. In this talk, originally delivered as part of the Global Blake In Conversation series, Jason Whittaker explores some of the connections between Gray's mythic work and that of Blake, especially in his first novel, Lanark: A Life in Four Books.2024-07-0939 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake's Samson - Milton, the Bible and OrcIn this episode, Annise Rogers looks at the development of the figure of Samson in Blake's early collection, Poetical Sketches, exploring the connections to John Milton's Samson Agonistes, the violent and disturbing allusions to this hero in the Bible, and how he may have served as an early prototype of Orc and, later, the giant Albion.2024-06-1530 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldThere's Lots of Blake in Finnegans Wake: James Joyce's Adaptation of JerusalemCritics have long noted the influence of William Blake on James Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake. What has been understudied, however, is the way Joyce extends Blake's subversive transformation of the epic tradition in his long poems, especially Jerusalem. While Ulysses is typically regarded as Joyce's major engagement with epic literature, Matthew Leporati argues in this podcast that Finnegans Wake more radically engages it by adapting Jerusalem into a postmodern, postcolonial reflection on empire's fragmentation of the world and on the possibility of creating global unity.2024-06-0646 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldTill We Have Built Jerusalem: Billy Bragg on William BlakeBilly Bragg in conversation with Jason Whittaker on the influence of Blake on his life, music and politics, looking also at questions of the hymn Jerusalem and Englishness. This is taken from a recording originally made for The Blake Society in 2022.2024-05-2835 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldViral Blake - how Blake's Auguries of Innocence spread across mediaIn this episode, Mike Goode considers the ways in which William Blake's famous invocation, "To see a world in a grain of sand" has become a viral meme jumping across different media formats, from poetry anthologies to popular TV shows and even computer viruses. This podcast is adapted from a talk originally made to the Global Blake conference in 2022.2024-05-2536 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake's The First Book of UrizenIn this episode of Visionary: How William Blake changed the world, Jason Whittaker is joined by Sharon Choe, Annise Rogers, and Hannah McAuliffe to discuss one of the darkest works ever created by Blake - The First Book of Urizen. Pubished in 1794, this illuminated book is a satire on the the Book of Genesis that shows a horrific vision of material creation, human sexuality and the body.2024-05-1734 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake and Angela CarterIn this episode of Visionary: How William Blake changed the world, Jason Whittaker considers the ways in which Blake influenced the writer Angela Carter, in particular her science fiction satire, The Passion of New Eve, a retelling of Milton a Poem and a scathing critique of Blake's ideas of gender and sexuality.2024-04-2213 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake and J.G. BallardIn this episode of Visionary: How William Blake changed the world, Jason Whittaker considers the ways in which the SF author J.G. Ballard rewrote Blake's Milton a Poem in his fantastical novel, The Unlimited Dream Company.2024-04-1515 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake's Universe at the Fitzwilliam MuseumIn this episode of Visionary: How William Blake Changed the World, Jason Whittaker, Sharon Choe and Annise Rogers review the exhibition William Blake's Universe on display in early 2024 at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, considering some of the highlights of the exhibition and how it seeks to link Blake to contemporary European artists.2024-03-2641 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldJerusalem: From Blake to ParryThis episode of Visionary: How William Blake Changed the World, traces the history of his famous poem beginning with the lines "And did those feet", better known as the hymn Jerusalem. It begins with the circumstances of Blake's composition after his trial for sedition in Felpham, before exploring how the poem was set to music by Sir Hubert Parry during the First World War.2024-03-2131 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldBlake and Tolkien's MythmakingIn their various ways, William Blake and J. R. R. Tolkien are two of the most important creators of imaginary worlds in literary history, having inspired generations of writers and artists to devise their own myths and legends. In this podcast, Jason Whittaker is joined by Sharon Choe, William Sherwood and Annise Rogers to discuss the ways in which Blake and Tolkien shared a fascination with the mythology of Britain, and how Nordic, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon tales shaped their tales. As well as the similarities between these two writers, it explores their differences and how their legacy...2024-03-0952 min
Visionary: How William Blake Changed the WorldWilliam Blake and the Idea of the BodyIn this podcast, Hannah McAuliffe, Jon Mee, and Sharon Choe (Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York) discuss William Blake’s changing conception of the body. The podcast considers Blake’s visual and poetic depictions of the body and how he uses the body as a metaphor both in his work and for his work. The episode covers Blake's education and early work, his prophetic poetry, his artistic medium and production process.2024-03-0843 min