Tara Lee – författare

Blake's unique pronouncements on spirituality and embodiment, revolutionary politics, sexuality and genius, as well as on textual and artistic reproduction, were formulated in opposition to the pre-Darwinian theories of evolution and self-organisation emerging over the course of the long eighteenth century. Over the last two decades, literary critics have uncovered the many ways in which discoveries in the life sciences led the Romantics to increasingly understand art and life in terms of matter's vibrant powers of self-organisation. Here, however, Tara Lee shows how Blake was influenced by a preformationist paradigm that privileged the unique kernel of identity in each being over material processes of change and development. Readers will leave this book with a greater appreciation for how Blake's works were in intimate dialogue with a range of intellectual discourses - political, theological, poetic, aesthetic - that were shaped by vibrant debates about embodiment and organic form.

What do literary dystopias reflect about the times? In Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase, contributors address this amorphous but pervasive genre, using diverse critical methodologies to examine how North America is conveyed or portrayed in a perceived age of crisis, accelerated uncertainty, and political volatility. Drawing from contemporary novels such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and the work of Margaret Atwood and William Gibson (to name a few), this book examines dystopian literature produced by North American authors between the signing of NAFTA (1994) and the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (2011). As the texts illustrate, awareness of and deep concern about perceived vulnerabilities - ends of water, oil, food, capitalism, empires, stable climates, ways of life, non-human species, and entire human civilizations - have become central to public discourseover the same period. By asking questions such as ""What are the distinctive qualities of post-NAFTA North American dystopian literature?"" and ""What does this literature reflect about the tensions and contradictions of the inchoate continental community of North America?"" Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase serves to resituate dystopian writing within a particular geo-social setting and introduce a productive means to understand both North American dystopian writing and its relevant engagements with a restricted, mapped reality.