William Blake and the Digital Humanities - Collaboration, Participation, and Social Media

William Blake's work demonstrates two tendencies that are central to social media: collaboration and participation. Not only does Blake cite and adapt the work of earlier authors and visual artists, but contemporary authors, musicians, and filmmakers feel compelled to use Blake in their own creative acts. This book identifies and examines Blake's work as a social and participatory network, a phenomenon described as zoamorphosis, which encourages - even demands - that others take up Blake's creative mission. The authors rexamine the history of the digital humanities in relation to the study and dissemination of Blake's work: from alternatives to traditional forms of archiving embodied by Blake's citation on Twitter and Blakean remixes on YouTube, smartmobs using Blake's name as an inspiration to protest the 2004 Republican National Convention, and students crowdsourcing reading and instruction in digital classrooms to better understand and participate in Blake's world. The book also includes a consideration of Blakean motifs that have created artistic networks in music, literature, and film in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, showing how Blake is an ideal exemplar for understanding creativity in the digital age.

List of contents

Introduction: Zoamorphosis and the Digital Humanities. 1. Archives and Ecologies 2. The Tyger 3. Jerusaelm 4. Digital Creativity: Teaching William Blake in the 21st Century 5. Blake and His Online Audiences 6. Folksonomies and Machine Editing: William Blake’s New Aesthetic on Flickr, Wikipedia and YouTube Coda: Dust and Self-Annihilation

About the author

Jason Whittaker is Professor of Blake Studies at University College Falmouth, UK.
Roger Whitson is Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century British Literature and the Digital Humanities at Washington State University, USA.

Product details

• Authors: Roger Whitson, Roger Whittaker Whitson, Whitson Roger, Jason Whittaker, Whittaker Jason
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.02.2015
• EAN: 9781138858527
• ISBN: 978-1-138-85852-7
• No. of pages: 212
• Series: Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Media Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Communication Studies, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Communication Studies, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: general, Literary studies: poetry and poets