John H. Jones. Blake on Language, Power, and Self-Annihilation. $90.00. Palgrave MacMillan, 2010. pp. xii+250.

John H. Jones's Blake on Language, Power, and Self-Annihilation argues that dialogic self-annihilation in Blake's oeuvre is a means of resistance to all forms of "philosophical and political monologism" that dictatorially impose a single vision upon readers and listeners.  Where monologism establishes the author as an authority and the reader as a passive recipient, Blake's dialogism invites both readers and listeners to the process of creating textual meaning through authorial acts of self-annihilation, acts that are opposed to the assertion of Blakean “selfhood.”  Jones asserts that Blake’s "inspired discourse" anticipates Bahktin's concept of dialogue, drawing upon Bahktin in each chapter to comment upon Blake's use of discourse.  Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination and Makdisi's William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s provide Jones with his theoretical orientation as he explores his thesis in chapters devoted to The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The [First] Book of Urizen, Milton, and Jerusalem. This monograph's strength lies in its detailed examination of a subject that has attained a high profile in Blake studies in the years preceding its publication. Jones's examination spans key works across Blake’s entire career and is supported by careful readings of select texts. Its weaknesses are that its appropriation of Bakhtin is sparse enough to be able to be cut entirely with no loss, and it at times presents a Blake so committed to non-authoritarian dialogism that he cannot say anything at all. Its greatest fault, ironically given the book's thesis, is that its thesis is applied without development or modification in chapter after chapter. This monograph on Blake's dialogism, therefore, does not sufficiently recognize the strength of assertions offered by a dialog, Blake's greater proximity to some points of view than others, and seems unable to assimilate Blake's insistence on definite form.