My name is Esther and I’m an undergraduate student working for the William Blake Archive. I joined in January of this year. At first, I was working on the transcription for bb35.1.1 and bb35.1.2 of The Everlasting Gospel. After it was decided that the transcription didn’t have a place on the website right now, I transferred over to helping maintain the site’s collection lists.
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On Friday, October 29th, from 2-4pm, the University of Rochester held its annual Undergraduate Research Fair.
For a little seasonal fun, myself and a couple of friends took some time to carve pumpkins! Admittedly, it had been quite a while since I took up such a task. And “pumpkin” isn’t exactly my medium of choice. I was a studio art major in undergrad and as a painter by trade, I avoided sculpture classes like the plague. Despite all this, I am not one to back down from a crafting challenge, which ensured that I took on a far too ambitious project. Particularly considering that said pumpkin will (and is) deteriorating as I write.
Continue readingOur autumn 2021 issue (vol. 55, no. 2) is out now; it will be open access for a week.
Continue readingIt has been about three years since the first video in what is now a series of video tutorials on the various features of the Blake Archive was uploaded to YouTube. It has been a little over a year since I completed the first of the handful that I would eventually write and record. Making these videos has been an interesting and valuable experience, and in the process I’ve learned a lot about microphones, screen recording, and perseverance. The original spreadsheet of video ideas from which we have been working is nearing completion and another video ideas brainstorming session is likely in order.
Continue readingThis obituary is by Morton D. Paley, co-editor of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly.
Continue readingThe first issue of volume 55 (summer 2021) is available online today. It will be open access until the end of July.
Continue readingJulian S. Whitney
Wabash College
Video games have become a popular medium in which to feature excerpts from Romantic poetry. The 2019 post-apocalyptic action game developed by Hideo Kojima, Death Stranding, originated with a 2016 reveal trailer that showcased a short excerpt from William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence.”[1] Likewise, the 2014 side-scrolling exploration game titled Elegy for a Dead World requires its players to write a diary based on their exploration through three worlds inspired by the literature of Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats.[2] These video games incorporate Romantic poetry as a way to contextualize, thematize, and construct the narrative and mechanical aspects of their respective designs. But what happens when a video game appropriates certain mythological elements of Romanticism and integrates them into the foundation of its own story?
Continue readingMelanie Smith is one of the leading artists of her generation. Her recent piece Vortex is a multimedia work inspired by William Blake’s The Circle of the Lustful that intertwines performance, sculpture, and moving images. Smith’s installation at the Parafin in London, titled Leave it to the Amateurs, pulls from Vortex, consisting of film, photographs, and collages. These are displayed alongside paintings on panel that are derived from the works of Blake.
Continue readingI’d like to think that the Blake Quarterly does a decent job of celebrating books and articles on Blake that are not in English. Chuck Ripley’s annual checklist of publications, which will next appear in our upcoming summer 2021 issue, features four collaborators: Hüseyin Alhas for works in Turkish, Fernando Castanedo for Romance languages, Hikari Sato for Japanese, and Vera Serdechnaia for Russian and other Cyrillic languages.
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