Description: This work examines the allusions to Blake throughout Harris's four Hannibal Lecter novels and provides a Blakean reading of the works as a whole, particularly in regard to the character of Lecter and the nature of evil in the world--and to what extent humanity should accept evil. The novels and their film versions reveal that Harris uses Blake to suggest that good and evil are intertwined and coexist, and that it is foolish to try to see them simply as opposing binaries. Refusing to recognize their intertwined relationship leads to imbalance and a negative outcome, as revealed in the fate of Graham in Red Dragon.
Brief description: Michelle Leigh Gompf is a professor of English and chair of the department of humanities at Concord University in Athens, West Virginia.
Review Quotes: "Gompf carefully examines elements of the plots and characters of all of the Lector novels to find how they all relate not only to Blake's work but to Blake himself. The result is well-reasoned and interesting, and send one searching for any reference in Blake 'to a nice Chianti'"-ProtoView.