Daniela Picón, Visiones de William Blake: Itinerarios de su recepción en los siglos XIX y XX

• Published in: Blake 2018-10, Vol.52 (2)
• Main Author: Aguilar, Andrés Ferrada
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0160-628X
• DOI: 10.47761/biq.221

In the four chapters of Visiones de William Blake, Daniela Picón explores three fundamental artistic zones of Western modernity: Romanticism, symbolism, and the avant-garde. In this sense, the book follows a comparative methodology that valorizes and, at the same time, problematizes arguments offered by literary critic René Wellek in Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism (1970). In the prologue, Picón introduces her interest in setting out “communicating vessels,” as André Breton said, between these zones in the light of Blake’s work. Under the luminous halo of the poet we can discern not only movements tied to a specific artistic or cultural field (Bourdieu 334), but also sensibilities that, beyond critical and aesthetic distinctions, suggest compelling affinities—among others, the bonding between the creator and his work, the conception of art as a vital experience where the actual and the transcendental meet, and the hermeneutical process led by readers/​spectators.