Blakeathon Part II: An Island in the Moon (1784)

Next up: Blake's 1784 An Island in the Moon. After the rather sophomoric Poetical Sketches ('83) I didn't know what to expect, but certainly not this: far-and-away the most Joycean thing I've ever read that's not also between the covers of Portrait, Ulysses, the Dubliners, or Finnegans Wake. Here is a man reveling in words (which, somehow, my intentional overuse of italics in same paragraph demonstrates) with a canine wantonness. At pts Blake even succumbs to the logoleptic urge to belch lists of names or items (cf. prev. ment. Joyce & Rabelais et. al.). This provides such gems as the complete Chapter 2:

Tilly Lally the Siptippidist Aradobo, the dean of Morocco, [Miss] Miss Gittipin [&] Mrs Nannicantipot, Mrs Sigtagatist Gibble Gabble the wife of Inflammable Gass—& Little Scopprell enterd the room

Or Chapter 10:

Thus these happy Islanders spent their time but felicity does not last long, for being met at the house of Inflammable Gass the windfinder, the following affairs happend.

Come Flammable said Gibble Gabble & lets enjoy ourselves bring the Puppets. Hay Hay, said he, you sho, why ya ya, how can you be so foolish.—Ha Ha Ha she calls the experiments puppets Then he went up stairs & loaded the maid, with glasses, & brass tubes, & magic pictures

Here ladies & gentlemen said he Ill shew you a louse [ climing] or a flea or a butterfly or a cock chafer the blade bone of a tittle back, no no heres a bottle of wind that I took up in the bog house. o dear o dear the waters got into the sliders. look here Gibble Gabble—lend me your handkerchief, Tilly Lally Tilly Lally took out his handkerchief which smeard the glass worse than ever. then he screwd it on then he took the sliders & then he set up the glasses for the Ladies to view the pictures thus he was employd & quite out of breath

While Tilly Laily & Scopprell were pumping at the air pump Smack went the glass—. Hang said Tilly Lally. Inflammable Gass turnd short round & threw down the table & Glasses & Pictures, & broke the bottles of wind & let out the Pestilence He saw the Pestilence fly out of the bottle & cried out while he ran out of the room. [Go] come out come out [you ar] we are putrified, we are corrupted. our lungs are destroyd with the Flogiston this will spread a plague all thro' the Island he was down stairs the very first on the back of him came all the others in a heap

So they need not bidding go

Not to everyone's taste, perhaps. But shows, thinks I, a nascent wordweaver romping around in his playground wordfiddling when he suddenly realizes to his delight that the words are the companion and not simply the toy. (Insert λόγος reference w/ added pun on legos. Oh gosh that works so well.)