Blake's late prophecies, The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem, feature a conflict between the poet-prophet Los and a Spectre embodying all he most opposes: intellectual scepticism, religious despair and a systematic philosophical logic of contraries, which is for Blake an abstraction from, and negation of, his ideal of 'life'. In this 1991 book, Lorraine Clark traces the analogy between Blake's Spectre and Soren Kierkegaard's concept of 'dread', whose spirit of negation and irony he seeks to conquer, in both its philosophical and aesthetic manifestations. Using Kierkegaard's philosophy to illuminate Blake's prophecies, Lorraine Clark shows these concepts to offer the basis for a profound critique both of romanticism, as it has come to be identified with the spirit of dialectic, and of the postmodern irony which it has spawned. Their attempt to rescue an ideal of life from its abstraction within idealist dialectics is itself deeply romantic, and offers a dramatisation of tensions - between scepticism and affirmation, religion and nihilism, philosophy and poetry - central to our understanding of romanticism.

The companion to Lorraine Clarke's first major UK exhibition since returning from Italy in 2000, this book explores the mysterious link between magic, medicine, and religion. Providing a full-color record of the show, it also includes a statement from the artist and an essay by medical historian Dr. Ruth Richardson. Clarke's work is an excavation of the human being, exploring the history of our bodily awareness and addressing contemporary issues.

Blake's late prophecies, The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem, feature a conflict between the poet-prophet Los and a Spectre embodying all he most opposes: intellectual scepticism, religious despair and a systematic philosophical logic of contraries, which is for Blake an abstraction from, and negation of, his ideal of 'life'. In this 1991 book, Lorraine Clark traces the analogy between Blake's Spectre and Soren Kierkegaard's concept of 'dread', whose spirit of negation and irony he seeks to conquer, in both its philosophical and aesthetic manifestations. Using Kierkegaard's philosophy to illuminate Blake's prophecies, Lorraine Clark shows these concepts to offer the basis for a profound critique both of romanticism, as it has come to be identified with the spirit of dialectic, and of the postmodern irony which it has spawned. Their attempt to rescue an ideal of life from its abstraction within idealist dialectics is itself deeply romantic, and offers a dramatisation of tensions - between scepticism and affirmation, religion and nihilism, philosophy and poetry - central to our understanding of romanticism.