Multimedia Blake
"...we are learning at last to read Blake's pictorial language: to read its hieroglyphics, to see, hear, to follow its choreography, its music, its mental drama...we have still to put fully into practise the dawning realization that all Blake's languages are one." David Erdman
"Blake invented a form in which text and design are simultaneously present and contrapuntally related...a difficult and radical form of mixed art, for which there is hardly a parallel in the history of modern culture." Northrop Frye
Blake is considered not only a major English writer but an important figure in the history of art. Most of his works were conceived and produced as multimedia, combining verbal and visual modes of expression with innovative technological methods of engraving and printing. This course will explore Blake's work in all three areas with the aid of state-of-the art computer technology. In addition to printed texts and archival facscimiles, students will access one of Blake's works in the form of a multimedia hypertext edition developed by the instructor. Students will present their own research and analysis by adding to this edition and by producing hypertext versions of other illuminated works by Blake. The final project of the class will consist of a large interactive multimedia document created by collaborative effort.
Interest in Blake as writer and artist is the sole prerequisite of the course. Experience with hypertext and multimedia, especially as taught in English 411 , is desireable but not necessary. A course in the English Romantics is also desireable but not necessary.Please contact the instructor, Steven Marx, extension 2411 or email "smarx," for more information and a look at the hypertext edition of "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."