Narrative Unbound : Re-Visioning William Blake's the Four Zoas [Hardcover]

Donald Ault (Author), Quasha George (Author), George Quasha (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 1995

"Narrative Unbound" is the first full-scale interpretation of the verbal text of Blake's most complex long poetic prophecy, "The Four Zoas." Never engraved or published in the poet/artist's lifetime, the poem remains in a single manuscript, apparently unfinished and heavily revised, and yet is widely celebrated as one of Blake's most powerful narrative works. Ault challenges the view that the poem is intrinsically incomplete and flawed, arguing instead that the famous difficulties of the text are aspects of Blake's transformative narrative strategies. By respecting the integrity of Blake's work, taking every written mark on the page as potentially functional, Ault shows how the intricate interweaving of narrative patterns and interruptions are instrumental to conscious reading. The poetic intent is nothing less than a complete renovation of the reading experience, the potential of which is the realization of what Blake has called "Four-fold vision." Ault's approach serves as a guide both to reading "The Four Zoas" and to participating in a radical poetic method.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Donald Ault served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he acted as Associate Editor of The Blake Newsletter. His "Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton" has been the major study of Blake's attack on the scientific world-view. Prof. Ault is co-editor of "Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method" (Duke University Press). --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Barrytown/ Station Hill Pr (January 30, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886449759
• ISBN-13: 978-1886449756
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,442,763 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars frye and beyond, March 4, 2009

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marcabru - See all my reviews

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This review is from: NARRATIVE UNBOUND: Re-Visioning William Blake's The Four Zoas (The Clinamen Studies Series) (Hardcover)

Some time ago I reread Northrop Frye's Fearful Symmetry before having another read through of the poems of William Blake including the longer poems The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. Despite my appreciation of Frye's book I was struck by the disconnect between many of Frye's well-expressed and coherent ideas and the poems themselves. I noticed also that Frye barely quoted from any of the poems or analyzed any passage specifically. At that point I started to look around for other texts which offered a different viewpoint from Frye to see if my dissatisfaction was justified or not. The more I read the alternative views the more convinced I became that Frye's account was seriously deficient. I do not think he is entirely wrong or that there is nothing of value in his book. However, I strongly recommend that readers interested in Blake's poetry read alternative views. The ones I have found most useful and interesting include the current book listed here as well as the following: The Four Zoas (Photographic Facsimile (Magno & Erdman), Narrative Unbound (Donald Ault), The Dialectic of Vision (Fred Dortort), Dark Figures in the Desired Country (Gerda Norvig), The Traveler in the Evening (Morton Paley), Rethinking Blake's Textuality (Molly Rothenburg), and some of the articles in Blake's Sublime Allegory (Curran & Wittreich Eds.) I might note that after doing all this reading of the poems and about Blake I am convinced that the unpublished The Four Zoas is the central and most significant poem Blake wrote and that both Milton and Jerusalem suffer in comparison with it. The problem that Blake may have realized with the Four Zoas was that it could never be published in its authentic form due to the graphic (for the time) psychosexual content of the illustrations (the subtitle of the poem is The Torments of Love and Jealousy).

5 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Donald Ault / Donald Duck / WIlliam Blake, June 25, 1998

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A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Narrative Unbound : Re-Visioning William Blake's The Four Zoas (Paperback)

Donald Ault is an inspiring and unique mind. No boundaries, for they are always re-examined, as he does here with a response and re-thinking of his own arguments towards William Blake and his responses to the Newtonian Universe. Donald Ault is a mind stretched as it should be--lobes in literature, lobes in Disney, lobes in Coca-Cola. His books do not yet show his utter vastness, but I hope one day his thoughts on Donald Duck will come to the bibliography.