Flexible design revisionary poetics in Blake's Vala or The four Zoas / John B. Pierce.

Includes bibliographies and index.

"Vala or The Four Zoas is one of William Blake's few surviving manuscripts and affords a unique opportunity to examine a significant evolution in his poetic practice. While the poem itself exhibits a consistent thematic interest, the modes and methods of representing these interests underwent a radical change in the ten or more years in which Blake wrote and reworked the poem. Flexible Design offers an extended and detailed treatment of the gradual shift that took place in Blake's poetics during the composition, transcription, and revision of Vala or The Four Zoas." "Pierce traces how, in the process of revision, Blake experimented with characterization, increased the importance of Christian symbolism, and developed a mode of narrative presentation controlled less by chronological sequence than by the use of thematic juxtaposition and typology."--BOOK JACKET.

Introduction: Manuscript and Poetics -- Narrative -- Beginnings and Creation -- Experiments in Structure -- Character -- Recasting the Copperplate -- Completing the Four Zoas -- The Revelations of Rahab -- Conclusion: Revisionary Poetics -- The Copperplate Text of Vala -- Stages in the Development of Nights VII through IX of Vala or The Four Zoas.

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