Latest updates from the Global Blake Network
Our 'In Conversation' Series,
and our
Musical Symposium Videos
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In December our 'In Conversation' speaker William Rubel considers some of the many readings of Blake's 'The Fly', while in January, Ramazan Saral explores the shared sentiments and mysticism of Blake and Rumi.
Blake’s “The Fly” presents us with the absurd implications of the optics of finitude. Cut off from infinite sympathies by his epistemic stance, “The Fly’s” empiricist speaker cannot help but reduce himself to the humming chaos of non-life or of inert matter. For him, human life and insect life become equivalent, a mindless buzz. Akin to the other voices of the Songs of Experience, his is the voice of a circumscribed modern agent who, having negligently killed a fly, is thinking through its moral and existential implications. “The Fly” can be read as a more concise and sophisticated version of "There Is No Natural Religion", offering the same parody of the violent absurdity of Lockean epistemology but in ways that dramatise rather than criticise the spectral and discursive “I.”
William Rubel will present this talk on 2 December, 2024 at 19.00-20.00.
All Global Blake Events are free via Zoom. To register, please go to globalblake.com/events/
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Recording of Ines Tebourski's talk
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Ines Tebourski's talk on the role of Los as narcissist in Blake's Jerusalem is now available to view.
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Musical Afterlives Symposium
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A huge thank you to the speakers and attendees of the Global Blake Symposium: Musical Afterlives who made it such a fantastic and invigorating day.
We are currently in the process of putting up videos of the talks on our Zoavision YouTube channel, which you can find at https://www.youtube.com/@ZoavisionMedia
The Keynote talk by Barry Miles on Allen Ginsberg’s recordings of Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience can be found as YouTube video here or you can listen to it as podcast across a range of streaming services , including Spotify, Apple and Amazon. Go to our Podcasts page to find all the links, or search for "Visionary: How William Blake changed the world" on your favourite streaming service.
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Our Autumn/Winter 'In Conversation' Series
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William Rubel – ‘A Fly Like Thee?’
2 December, 2024 at 19.00-20.00
Ramazan Saral – Wedding with Eternity: Death in the Poetry of Blake and Rumi
13 January, 2025 at 19.00-20.00
For more information and to register please go to:
www.globalblake.com/events
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Review
Global Blake’s own Camila Oliveira reviews Gordon Cameron Sly’s Britten’s Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs: Cyclic Design and Meaning. Please click here to read this review.
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Other News from the Global Blake Network
On the Global Blake website, you'll find details of latest publications and events including:
- Jake Elliot - "Blake's 'Watchman': Los and the London Police" in European Romantic Review.
- New publications by scholars.
- Talks and events as part of The Blake Society.
- Regular updates of events around the globe.
To keep abreast of news and information on William Blake, go to globalblake.com/news/
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