Challenging the idea that a writer's work reflects his experiences in time and place, Cooper locates the action of William Blake's major illuminated books in the ahistorical present, an impersonal spirit realm beyond the three-dimensional self. Historicist attempts to place Blake's vision in perspective, Cooper argues, involve a self-contradictory denial of his performativity as a poet-artist of multiple geometrical dimensions.

Andrew M. Cooper recently retired as Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.

Contents: Introduction; Blake's post-Enlightened anamnesis; Seeing voices in Songs of Innocence; The skewed empiricism of Blake's early tractates; Common sense in Visions of the Daughters of Albion; Storytelling through the vortex of sense; Freedom from The Book of Urizen; The picture of the mind in 'the vision of the Last Judgment'; The physiology of vision in Milton; Conclusion: '1804'; Bibliography; Index.