The Friends of Victoria University Library present
William Blake
Illustrated Lectures
Dr. Michael Phillips
Oxford, UC London, University of Edinburgh,
Emeritus University of York
Annual F. David. Hoeniger Lecture
Parody and Play in Blake’s Composite Art
This illustrated lecture will look at examples of verbal and visual parody in William Blake’s illuminated books. Examples of increasing sophistication are explored that invite levels of recognition and ironic interplay with earlier texts and images of Durer, Holbein, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Salvator Rosa, Isaac Watts, Hogarth, John Newberry, John Hamilton Mortimer and James Barry, amongst others.
Wednesday, March 28 at 7:30 p.m.
Emmanuel College, Room 119
(75 Queen’s Park Crescent)
Lecture 2
“printing in the infernal method”: William Blake’s ‘Illuminated Printing’ and the development of the Large Colour Prints of 1795
The lecture will explain Blake’s invention in the context of conventional Eighteenth–Century illustrated book production, its metaphorical significance for Blake, the creation of the first illuminated books like the Songs of Innocence, and how the further development of colour–printing his images led to the production of the Large Colour Prints or monotypes of 1795.
Thursday, March 29 at 4:15 p.m.
Victoria College, Room 115
(91 Charles Street West)
Museum subway station
rsvp to s.gough@utoronto.ca or 416–585–4471
Professor Phillips taught at Oxford, University College London and Edinburgh University before joining the interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York, where he is now Emeritus Fellow. He has published widely on William Blake and was guest curator of the major exhibitions of Blake at Tate Britain 2000, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 2001, and at the Petit Palais 2009.
He is currently preparing an exhibition – ‘William Blake Apprentice & Master’ – for the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, opening in Spring 2014, and writing a biography of Blake. Training and research as a printmaker has enabled him to re-create in the studio how Blake produced his illuminated books.
Additional support from the collaborative program in Book History & Print Culture, University of Toronto