William Blake & the Jews:
The Bibliography

compiled by Ralph Dumain

Blake, the Jews, & Jewish Philosophers

Bogan, James J. "Apocalypse Now: William Blake and the Conversion of the Jews," English Language Notes, vol. 19, no. 2, December 1981, pp. 116-120. (Abstract/review)

Galchinsky, Michael. "Blake's 'firm perswasions': The Judaic and the Jew." Paper delivered at the MLA, 1990 Session on "Romanticism and Anti-Semitism." (Abstract/review)

Gould, Thomas. "Four Levels of Reality, in Plato, Spinoza, and Blake," Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, vol. 8, no. 1, Spring 1969, pp. 20-50. (Abstract/review)

Holt, Ted. "Blake's 'Elohim' and the Hutchinsonian Fire: Anti-Newtonianism and Christian Hebraism in the Work of William Blake," Romanticism: The Journal of Romantic Culture and Criticism vol. 9, no. 1, 2003, pp. 20-36. (Abstract/review)

Schuchard, Marsha Keith. "William Blake and the Jewish Swedenborgians," in The Jews and British Romanticism: Politics, Religion, Culture, edited by Sheila A. Spector (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 61-86. (Abstract/review)

Shabetai, Karen. "The Question of Blake's Hostility Toward the Jews," ELH, vol. 63, no. 1, Spring 1996, pp. 139-152. (Abstract/review)

Tannenbaum, Leslie. ‘"What Are Those Golden Builders Doing?": Mendelssohn, Blake, and the (Un)Building of Jerusalem’, in British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature, edited by Sheila A. Spector (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 79-90. (Abstract/review)

Whitson, Roger. 'Jerusalem and "the Jew:" Biopolitics Between Blake and Spinoza', Romanticism on the Net, Issue 40, November 2005. URL: http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2005/v/n40/012462ar.html. (Abstract/review)

Yoder, R. Paul. "Blake and the Book of Numbers: Joshua the Giant Killer and the Tears of Balaam," in The Jews and British Romanticism: Politics, Religion, Culture, edited by Sheila A. Spector (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 87-102. (Abstract/review)

Blake & Kabbalah

Karr, Don. Review of Sheila Spector's “Wonders Divine”: The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth and “Glorious Incomprehensible”: The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Language, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2001, Esoterica, V, 2003, p. 223.

Spector, Sheila A. "Glorious Incomprehensible": The Development of Blake's Kabbalistic Language. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 2001. (Abstract/review)

Spector, Sheila A. Wonders Divine: The Development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Myth. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2001.

Romanticism & the Jews

Page, Judith. Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and Judaism in British Romantic Literature and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Contents.

Spector, Sheila A., ed. British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Contents. Google books: text online.

Spector, Sheila A., ed. The Jews and British Romanticism: Politics, Religion, Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Contents.

Selected Background Studies

Rix, Robert. "William Blake and the Radical Swedenborgians," Esoterica, V, 2003, pp. 95-137. (Abstract/review)

Schuchard, Marsha Keith. "Why Mrs. Blake Cried: Swedenborg, Blake, and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision," Esoterica, II, 2000, pp. 45-93. Printable version.

Scope note: This bibliography lists all known scholarly studies in English of Blake's treatment of the Jews as a people, the nature of Jewishness, and Judaism as a religion insofar as it implicates Blake's attitude to Jews. Also included here are comparative studies of Blake and Jewish intellectuals (especially Spinoza and Mendlessohn) which illuminate the philosophical and ideological issues. There are numerous studies of Blake's relationship to aspects of the Jewish religion—the Old Testament, Kabbalah, etc. These are excluded here unless they concern Blake's characterization of the Jewish people and Jewishness as an ideological trope. I have made an exception in including two books by Sheila Spector on Blake and the Kabbalah (and one review of these books), because she has also compiled anthologies on Romanticism and the Jews. The annotated version of this bibliography includes my abstracts and comments on these individual works,as well as an exanded version of this note. It will be obvious that Blake's treatment of the Jews raises touchy ideological issues, but the place of Judaism, Jewish mysticism, and Jews in the complex of Blake's overall esoteric schema has to be kept in mind while evaluating his potentially offensive expressions.

William Blake & the Jews: An Annotated Bibliography

William Blake Study Guide