Blake Society talk

Blake’s Infinite Writing
A Talk by Eric Wilson


One of the most extraordinary evocations of Blake in many years, My Business Is to Create : Blake’s Infinite Writing is also a manual on creative writing, the jewel on which a writer’s life might turn.


In this talk the author invokes a specific kind of irony - he calls it transcendental irony - to explore Blake’s life and art in a new way. In particular, Wilson sheds fresh light on Blake’s idea of the infinite.


Eric G. Wilson is the Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University, where he teaches Romantic poetry, film and literature, and literary nonfiction. He is the author of many books, most recently My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing (University of Iowa Press) and Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can’t Look Away (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). Earlier titles include Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, an LA Times bestseller, and The Mercy of Eternity: A Memoir of Depression and Grace, an account of how Blake’s idea of forgiveness helped Wilson in his struggle with clinical depression.

http://www.wfu.edu/~wilsoneg/