Blake William - Blake, Lavater and physiognomy

BLAKE, LAVATER AND PHYSIOGNOMY

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Studies in Comparative Literature are produced in close collaboration with the British Comparative Literature Association, and range widely across comparative and theoretical topics in literary and translation studies, accommodating research at the interface between different artistic media and between the humanities and the sciences.

PUBLISHED IN THIS SERIES

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2. Hlderlin and the Dynamics of Translation , by Charlie Louth
3. Aeneas Takes the Metro: The Presence of Virgil in Twentieth-Century French Literature , by Fiona Cox
4. Metaphor and Materiality: German Literature and the World-View of Science 17801955 , by Peter D. Smith
5. Marguerite Yourcenar: Reading the Visual , by Nigel Saint
6. Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski , translated by Adam Czerniawski and with an introduction by Donald Davie
7. Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry, by Richard Serrano
8. The Anatomy of Laughter , edited by Toby Garfitt, Edith McMorran and Jane Taylor
9. Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de sicle , by Richard Hibbitt
10. The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In Pursuit of Hesitation , by Claire Whitehead
11. Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece , by Dimitris Papanikolaou
12. Wanderers Across Language: Exile in Irish and Polish Literature of the Twentieth Century , by Kinga Olszewska
13. Moving Scenes: The Aesthetics of German Travel Writing on England 17831830 , by Alison E. Martin
14. Henry James and the Second Empire , by Angus Wrenn
15. Platonic Coleridge , by James Vigus
16. Imagining Jewish Art , by Aaron Rosen
17. Alienation and Theatricality: Diderot after Brecht , by Phoebe von Held
18. Turning into Sterne: Viktor Shklovskii and Literary Reception , by Emily Finer
19. Yeats and Pessoa: Parallel Poetic Styles , by Patricia Silva McNeill
20. Aestheticism and the Philosophy of Death: Walter Pater and Post-Hegelianism , by Giles Whiteley
21. Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy , by Sibylle Erle
22. Rethinking the Concept of the Grotesque: Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte , by Shun-Liang Chao

SIBYLLE ERLE

Studies in Comparative Literature 21
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
2010

First published 2010

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Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge
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LEGENDA is an imprint of the
Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge

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Modern Humanities Research Association and Taylor & Francis 2010

ISBN 978-1-906540-69-2 (hbk)

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FR MEINE ELTERN
CHRISTA UND RUDOLF ERLE

This book does not say all there is to say about Blake, Lavater and physiognomy. A physiognomical reading of the Visionary Heads and their literary contexts, for example, is yet to be written. The way I see it is that in the 1790s Blake responded to Lavaters approach to physiognomy in his creation myth, consisting of The Book of Urizen (1794), The Book of Ahania (1795), and The Book of Los (1795). This does not mean that I think that these books ought to be perceived solely as Blakes struggle with representing the human form. His creation myth is a highly sensitive commentary on contemporary political, radical, dissenting and theological debates. But rather than discuss Blakes treatment of time and space as an attempt to mythologize and defamiliarize historical events, to raise the faculties of his reader, I want to examine how these factors contribute to what Blake thinks shapes human identity. This book will, I hope, sit comfortably next to other discussions of Blakes bodies and complement or link medical arguments, such as Tristanne Connollys and Hisao Ishizukas, with aesthetic and political ones, such as W. J. T. Mitchells and Jon Mees.