Professor Keith Sagar gives Blake seminar Professor Keith Sagar,
a legendary figure from the world of literary criticism, gave a
seminar to A2 literature students on William Blake recently. His
provocative and thought-provoking readings of Songs of Innocence
and Experience gave students an idea of how literary criticism
can be an act of creativity as well as analysis. What, for
example, is the symbolism of a rose? After listening to
students’ first thoughts, Professor Sagar steered the discussion
into an exploration of an impressive range of possible meanings,
all of which he rooted in examples from the history of
literature. Rejecting modish nomenclature - “intertextuality” -
Professor Sagar explained how writers had always read and been
influenced by other writers (“of course writers actually read as
well as wrote”). His no-nonsense approach did not, however,
exclude complex theoretical frameworks. Having first convinced
students of the way that particular symbols – the rose, tiger
and worm, for example – m