PRELIMINARY REMARKS


possibilities for reorganizing the narrative field; the threads of plot I had been following so
carefully suddenly became tangled in new knots of complexity; what presented itself as obvious
now appeared incongruous. The physical bulk of this book is integral to its program: the accumu-
lation of details does not exemplify but actually constitutes its argument. The book as a product thus
reflects the being of the poem it is attempting to interpret and retell analytically. What remains is a
temporal cross-section of reading-an arrested moment in an unfolding, interminable process.
 Narrative Unbound thus stands as a residue of an ongoing struggle with a radically open text,
whose heterogeneity exposes the uncompletable, self-revisionary nature of its fundamental inquiry
into being. Due both to its narratological properties and the processes of revision it underwent, The
Four Zoas calls most deeply to Blake's method of composition and is an index and indication ofBlake's
request that we remain in a perpetual state of inquiry and exploration.












 Textual Note


This study uses as its basic text the 4th edition, revised, 1970, of David V. Erdman's Poetry and
Prose of William Blake, with some corrections introduced from Erdman's more recent Complete
Poetry and Prose of William Blake, 1982. All references to Erdman's textual notes are given dual
citations, first to the 1970 edition and then to the 1982 edition. See Note 3 of "Preliminary
Remarks" and Notes 6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 17, 18, and 19 to "Region A," as well as the "Appendix: On
the Embedding of Night VIIb in Night VIIla" for some reasons for this choice of text. All italics
within quotations are mine unless otherwise noted. See the List of Illustrations on page 473 for
the sources of our selection of "visual texts" from Young's Night Thoughts and The Four Zoas
manuscript, discussed in the Postscript, pages 469-472.


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