Flexible design
Subtitle: revisionary poetics in Blake's Vala or The four Zoas
By: John B. Pierce.
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Montreal
Language: eng
Number of pages: 206
Subjects: Blake, William, 1757-1827; Blake, William, 1757-1827. -- Criticism, Textual; Blake, William, 1757-1827 -- Technique; Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- 18th century; Poetics -- History -- 18th century
Description: Vala or The Four Zoas is one of William Blake's few surviving manuscripts and affords a unique opportunity to examine a significant evolution in his poetic practice. While the poem itself exhibits a consistent thematic interest, the modes and methods of representing these interests underwent a radical change in the ten or more years in which Blake wrote and reworked the poem.

Flexible Design offers an extended and detailed treatment of the gradual shift that took place in Blake's poetics during the composition, transcription, and revision of Vala or The Four Zoas. Pierce traces how, in the process of revision, Blake experimented with characterization, increased the importance of Christian symbolism, and developed a mode of narrative presentation controlled less by chronological sequence than by the use of thematic juxtaposition and typology.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-201) and index.