James Rovira

Apocalyptic nightmares that humanly-created intelligences will one day rise up against their creators haunt the western creative imagination. However, these narratives find their initial expression not in the widely disseminated Frankenstein story but in William Blake's early mythological works. This book looks at why we persistently fear our own creations by examining Blake's illuminated books of the 1790s through the lens of Kierkegaard's theories of personality and of anxiety. It offers a close examination of Kierkegaard's and Blake's similar, and to an extent shared, historical milieux as residents of Denmark's and England's political and economic centers. Each author's residence in a major urban center motivated them to develop a concept of innocence closely identified with the pastoral, and to place their respective and similar concepts of innocence within a larger developmental scheme encompassing an ethical and then a religious consciousness. Rovira identifies contemporarytensions between monarchy and democracy, science and religion, and nature and artificeas the source bothof Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety and Blake's representation of creation anxiety in his early illuminated books.

Apocalyptic nightmares that humanly-created intelligences will one day rise up against their creators haunt the western creative imagination. However, these narratives find their initial expression not in the widely disseminated Frankenstein story but in William Blake's early mythological works. This book looks at why we persistently fear our own creations by examining Blake's illuminated books of the 1790s through the lens of Kierkegaard's theories of personality and of anxiety. It offers a close examination of Kierkegaard's and Blake's similar, and to an extent shared, historical milieux as residents of Denmark's and England's political and economic centers. Each author's residence in a major urban center motivated them to develop a concept of innocence closely identified with the pastoral, and to place their respective and similar concepts of innocence within a larger developmental scheme encompassing an ethical and then a religious consciousness. Rovira identifies contemporary tensions between monarchy and democracy, science and religion, and nature and artifice as the source both of Kierkegaard's concept of anxiety and Blake's representation of creation anxiety in his early illuminated books.

Writing for College and Beyond prepares students for their future college classes by covering the strategies common to most college writing. In the process of being prepared for college writing, however, students are also taught chapter by chapter how these writing skills will carry forward into their future professional lives beyond college. One of the least expensive first year writing textbooks on the market, the text isn't inflated with material that most instructors and students won't use, and several exercises encourage students to use either provided web or YouTube links as texts supporting their practice for longer assignments.If you're a first year writing instructor and would like to consider this text for your course, email the author at brightfuturespublishing (at) gmail (dot) com for a desk copy.