Jason Whittaker In Conversation - Mapping Hell: Alasdair Gray and William Blake

At the time of his death in 2019, the novelist and artist Alasdair Gray was widely lauded as a Scottish William Blake.
This talk will trace the influence of William Blake on Gray as an example of second-order reception, his interest in the earlier artist being prompted by Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth, which he read when he was twelve years old and which stimulated him to train as a painter and muralist. His early writing was also, in turn, affected by James Joyce who had transferred Blake in various ways to Dublin and, like the Anglo-Irish Cary, demonstrated the particular appeal of "English" Blake as an alternative model for national art and literature.
Jason Whittaker is a writer and professor at the University of Lincoln who has written extensively on Blake's reception.