Weaving Tales: Anglo-Iberian Encounters on Literatures in English, is a collection of essays bringing together Spanish and Portuguese scholars to provide readings of different aspects of English literature. It opens with two essays looking at the work of William Blake by Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa and Jason Whittaker, and Cecilia Marchetto Santorun as follows:
M. Cecilia Marchetto Santorun focuses her attention on popular culture and Spanish tradition to explore William Blake’s influence on popular culture in Britain and in Spain, and the meaning of poetic and literary allusions to Blake’s poetry, references and intertextuality in both of these cultural contexts. William Blake has often been seen as a patriotic literary symbol (consider the hymn “Jerusalem”), but these assumptions neglect Blake’s criticism of religion and power, the sedition trials and even Blake’s notion of authorship as a collaborative human creation. Under this scope, the presence of Blake’s poetry in Spanish literature is an example of his transnational possibilities and meanings, from Leopoldo M. Panero’s poetry to the lyrics of rock and roll band Héroes del Silencio, and even the Galician poetry and art of Placido Castro (1902-1967) and Luis Seoane (1910-1969).
Alcinda Pinheiro de Sousa is a Doctor of English Literature awarded by Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa with the PhD thesis ‘As the Eye – Such the Object’: Da Arte e da Ciência em William Blake (On Art and Science in W. B.). She is currently leading the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies research project “Receiving | Perceiving English Literature in the Digital Age”.
Jason Whittaker is a Professor at the University of Lincoln. He specializes in Romantic literature and the reception of William Blake, and his most recent books include Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake (2021) and Jerusalem: Blake, Parry and the Fight for Englishness (2022).
Cecilia Marchetto holds a PhD from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), during which stage she worked as a member of the research group Discourse and Identity. Her recent publications include ‘Terrible monsters Sin-bred’: Blakean monstrosity in Alan Moore’s graphic novels (Palgrave Communications, 2019) and “The War ‘twixt Sun and Moon”: Evil and Gender in William Blake’s Early Illuminated Books and Alan Moore’s From Hell (English Studies, 2020).
Weaving Tales is available at the Routledge website and other booksellers.