On the Reading of a Dictionary
Posted on January 5th, 2010
I’m about to embark on one of my strangest reading challenges: a dictionary. This, however, is not your ordinary dictionary. This is instead S. Foster Damon’s extraordinary 1965 publication (as revised in 1988), A BLAKE DICTIONARY: THE IDEAS AND SYMBOLS OF WILLIAM BLAKE.
Functioning as a splendid browser’s guide through the complicated labyrinth of Blake’s poetry, Damon’s dictionary becomes an intriguing labyrinth of its own within which there are thousands of opportunities for redirected, interconnected inquiries and musings. Who knew, for example, that the Lord’s Supper, for Blake, according to Damon, symbolized [nothing more than?] the Brotherhood of Man!
I look forward to seeing the ways in which Damon’s definitions and explanations match up with Blake’s work and the commentaries of my favorite Blake critics: Northrup Frye, David Erdman, and Harold Bloom. [Those critical preferences probably confirm my status as a neo-New Critic, and that would very much annoy my colleagues at the university.]
I am, by the way, combining my dictionary reading with re-readings of Gilchrist’s and Ackroyd’s biographies of Blake. So, I guess this confirms January for me as a “William Blake Month.”
But, that is enough about my curious excursions about which I will comment again from time to time. For now, however, I would very like to hear about your “strangest” reading. Surely someone is taking on something even more peculiar than a dictionary and William Blake.
Tags: Ackroyd, Biographies, Brotherhood Of Man, Browser, Colleagues, Commentaries, David Erdman, Definitions, Explanations, Gilchrist, Harold Bloom, Inquiries, Labyrinth, Musings, Neo, Northrup Frye, Poetry Dictionary, S Foster Damon, Symbols, William Blake
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