Digital Designs on Blake

Digital Designs on Blake, a new electronic feature at Romantic Circles, edited by Ron Broglio (who’s a friend) and containing work from lots of great people, including the herd’s own Joseph Byrne. Also David M. Baulch, Marcel O’Gorman, Nelson Hilton, Adam Komisaruk (see also his piece in the current Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly), Steven Guynup, and Fred Yee.

Blake studies is an interesting place to track digital humanities. On the one hand, you have the documentary tradition, probably most typified by the Blake Archive (which has just published Blake’s gorgeous illustrations to Dante). On the other hand you have the kind of explorations and experimentation found here, which include work with MOOs, Flash, and 3-D modeling. It’s silly to argue that one or the other is somehow more “Blakekean” or more faithful to Blake’s own poetics—that’s never been a compelling criteria to me. But it’s not surprising that Blake functions as a receptor site for both modes of digital scholarship, since Blake himself embodied all the contradictions: illuminator and copyist, visionary and social realist, artist and laborer. Go have a look for yourself.