Witness Against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law - Softcover

Thompson, E. P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565840992 ISBN 13: 9781565840997

Publisher: The New Press, 1995

Synopsis

Witness Against the Beast is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study in which the renowned social historian E.P. Thompson contends that most of the assumptions scholars have made about William Blake are misleading and unfounded. Brilliantly reexamining Blake’s cultural milieu and intellectual background, Thompson detects in Blake’s poetry a repeated call to resist the usury and commercialism of the Antichrist” embodied by contemporary society to witness against the beast.”

About this title

About the Author:

E.P. Thompson (1924 1993) was one of England’s foremost historians and social critics. His books include Customs in Common, Witness Against the Beast, Making History, The Romantics, and The Essential E.P. Thompson (all published by The New Press), as well as The Making of the English Working Class.

Review:

Almost every page offers fresh evidence not merely of his vast overflowing erudition, but of his wit, his humanity, his soaring historical imagination. -- The Guardian

The union of knowledge with imagination and conviction is the mark of this book, as it seems to have been of Thompson's life. The book also communicates the excitement of the scholar-explorer in his quest. . . A splendid conclusion to a life of great scholarship. -- New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1565840992
• ISBN 13: 9781565840997
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256