Vala #3 and Blake’s Visionary Animism
Vala #3 and Blake’s Visionary Animism
Ecology and Blake’s Visionary Animism
Vala is the journal of The Blake Society. Issue #3 focuses on Blake and Nature and features an article by Andy Wilson on Ecology and Blake’s Visionary Animism
Download the latest issue of Vala
Vala is the journal of the Blake Society. Its third issue is given over to the question of Blake’s relationship to nature, and includes articles by Timothy Morton and many others. Download it from the Blake Society site. Previous issues can be downloaded using the links below. Click on the images to the left to see the cover and table of contents.
Ecology and Blake’s Visionary Animism
Andy Wilson has a short essay in Vala #3, titled ‘Ecology and Blake’s Visionary Animism’. Download it directly from the Blake Society Site.
Despite the efforts of remorseful boomers and antagonised traditionalists, the name of William Blake will forever be associated with the radical counterculture of the 1960s. Blake was adopted by the counterculture as the prophet of an antinomianism that was both political and personal — kicking-open the ‘doors of perception’ and blowing the locks from prison doors. Protesters turned Blake’s aphorisms into slogans with which to galvanise their protests. It is in the context of such radicalism that our image of Blake was forged. Yet Blake’s relevance is perhaps challenged now by the rise of environmental politics. While concern with the environment was fanned into wider life by the counterculture, its impact is now both more sharply focussed and more broadly accepted, with the ongoing environmental collapse becoming the defining issue of our time. Put bluntly, how can the Blake who disparaged nature as ‘the work of the devil’ be relevant to an environmental politics designed to save it?
Themes regarding nature and animal consciousness were also discussed in the post, Thoughts on Blake, Blade Runner and Animal Solidarity.
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