Blakes Agitation is a thorough and engaging reflection on the dynamic, forward-moving, and active nature of critical thought. Steven Goldsmith investigates the modern notion that theres a fiery feeling in critical thought, a form of emotion that gives authentic criticism the potential to go beyond interpreting the world. By arousing this critical excitement in readers and practitioners, theoretical writing has the power to alter the course of history, even when the only evidence of its impact is the emotion it arouses. Goldsmith identifies William Blake as a paradigmatic example of a socially critical writer who is moved by enthusiasm and whose work, in turn, inspires enthusiasm in his readers. He traces the particular feeling of engaged, dynamic urgency that characterizes criticism as a mode of action in Blakes own work, in Blake scholarship, and in recent theoretical writings that identify the heightened affect of critical thought with the potential for genuine historical change. Within each of these horizons, the critical thinkers enthusiasm serves to substantiate his or her agency in the world, supplying immediate, embodied evidence that criticism is not one thought-form among many but an action of consequence, accessing or even enabling the conditions of new possibility necessary for historical transformation to occur. The resulting picture of the emotional agency of criticism opens up a new angle on Blakes literary and visual legacy and offers a vivid interrogation of the practical potential of theoretical discourse.
Introduction: The Future of Enthusiasm Part I: Devil's Party 1. Blake's Agitation 2. Blake's Virtue Part II: A Passion for Blake Introduction: Critique of Emotional Intelligence 3. ""On Anothers Sorrow"" Toward an Auditory Imagination: Interlude on Kenzaburo Oe's Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age 4. Strange Pulse Wordsworth's Pulsation Machine, or the Half-Life of Mary Hutchinson: Interlude on ""She was a Phantom of delight"" 5. Criticism and the Work of Emotion Acknowledgments Appendix Notes Index
""A major reading of Blake, a significant contribution to affect studies, and a provocative meditation on the state of the profession... Seeing critical reading s the interaction of agitation with slow time could offer a healing message for a divided profession, but there will always be those who are impatient to make a positive difference. Thanks to Steven Goldsmith's outstanding book, both sides can now find sustenance in the work of William Blake.""
