Donald D. Ault ( ; October 5, 1942 – April 13, 2019) was a professor at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

and is primarily known for his work on British Romantic poet

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of t ...

, British physicist

Sir Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the g ...

and American comics artist

Carl Barks Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his work in Disney comic books, as the writer and artist of the first Donald Duck stories and as the creator of Scrooge McD ...

. He is also known as a foundational figure in the development of American

comics studies Comics studies (also comic art studies, sequential art studies or graphic narrative studies) is an academic field that focuses on comics and sequential art. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop cul ...

, and was the General Editor of the academic journal devoted to comics called '' ImageTexT''.

Career

Donald Ault graduated from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1968, after completing work on his dissertation tracing the conflict between British physicist

and

. Since then, he has taught at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

, and the

Working with William Blake

Ault's interests are wide and include everything from

Romantic poetry Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18t ...

psychophysics Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, ...

holography Holography is a technique that enables a wavefront to be recorded and later re-constructed. Holography is best known as a method of generating real three-dimensional images, but it also has a wide range of other applications. In principle, i ...

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might ...

deconstruction The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essen ...

typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...

mathematical notation Mathematical notation consists of using symbols for representing operations, unspecified numbers, relations and any other mathematical objects, and assembling them into expressions and formulas. Mathematical notation is widely used in mathem ...

, and the history of

animation Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

. At Berkeley in 1972–74, he instituted curriculum changes by creating English 176 (“Literature and Popular Culture”) and English 177 (“Literature and Philosophy”). Ault's first boo
''Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton''
an extended version of his dissertation, dealt with the complex relationship between Blake and Newton. The book won wide acclaim among Blake critics, and quickly became a foundational book in the field. He also published the most exhaustive book on Blake's visionary poem ''Vala'' calle
''Narrative Unbound: Re-Visioning William Blake's The Four Zoas.''
After reading ''Narrative Unbound,''

Jerome McGann Jerome John McGann (born July 22, 1937) is an American academic and textual scholar whose work focuses on the history of literature and culture from the late eighteenth century to the present. Career Educated at Le Moyne College (B.S. 1959), Sy ...

called Ault "probably the most innovative Blake critic in the country" Ault has published numerous articles on William Blake, including the notable "Where's Poppa? or, The Defeminization of Blake's Little Black Boy." which utilized "anomalous textual details" and turned attention away from the obvious racial issues present in the poem focusing on the more subtle politics of gender difference. He ends the essay with the note that, in a dream, he "showed this manuscript to Blake, who told me that he was 'not uncomfortable' with my reading of '

The Little Black Boy "The Little Black Boy" is a poem by William Blake included in ''Songs of Innocence'' in 1789. It was published during a time when slavery was still legal and the campaign for the abolition of slavery was still young. Interpretation In accorda ...

.'" While such comments have alienated some members of the Blake studies community, they are part and parcel of his criticism which highlights the textual minutae, visionary complexity, and visual oddity of Blake's work.

Donald Ault and Donald Duck

Ault also worked closely with Disney comic artist

and participated in a number of interviews with him. Ault's forays int
"Comic Studies"
revolve around his encounter with Barks' work on

Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...

. Ault sees Barks creating a surreal environment for the

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

characters in which what happens

happens outside normal visual space. It cannot happen, but it does--and with apparent ease. In film, a technique of rapid crosscutting would quickly disorient the viewer; but Barks' shifts in perspective--precisely because they are anchored in the simultaneity of the panels on a comic page--ground us in a coherent imaginative world.

Ault created controversy at

for teaching comics in University classes , and was featured in several newspaper articles about his work as well as a segment on

Entertainment Tonight ''Entertainment Tonight'' (or simply ''ET'') is an American first-run syndicated news broadcasting newsmagazine program that is distributed by CBS Media Ventures throughout the United States and owned by Paramount Streaming. ET also airs in Aus ...

. Ault edited a volume of interviews with the Disney artist, ''Carl Barks: Conversations'', in 2003, and also was executive producer and editorial supervisor for the videotape production ''The Duck Man: An Interview with Carl Barks'' (1996).

''ImageTexT''

In 2004, Ault founded the

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...

''ImageText''. ''ImageText'' promotes

the academic study of comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons. Under the guidance of an editorial board of scholars from a variety of disciplines, ''ImageTexT'' publishes solicited and peer-reviewed papers that investigate the material, historical, theoretical, and cultural implications of visual textuality. ''ImageTexT'' welcomes essays emphasizing (but not limited to) the aesthetics, cognition, production, reception, distribution and dissemination of comics and other media as they relate to comics, along with translations of previously existing research on comics as dimensions of visual culture.See the editorial statement for ''ImageText'' at http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/.

Selected bibliography

''Visionary Physics: Blake's Response To Newton''.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Reissued as a Midway Paperback, 1975. xvi + 230 pp.
''Narrative Unbound: Re-Visioning Blake's The Four Zoas''.
Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1987. xxvi + 518 pp. * ''Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method.'' Ed. Donald Ault, Mark Bracher, and Dan Miller. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987. 382 pp. * ''Carl Barks: Conversations.'' Ed. Donald Ault. University Press of Mississippi, 2003.

References

External links

* ttp://web.english.ufl.edu/comics/ ''UF Comics Studies'' Portal for Comic Studies at UF, including descriptions of all UF Comics Conferences and ImageText
''Personal Homepage for Donald Ault''

''ImageText'' a journal dedicated to the study of critical theory and comics

''Narrative Unbound'' fully online in UF's Digital Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ault, Donald University of Chicago alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty Vanderbilt University faculty University of Florida faculty William Blake scholars Comics critics 1942 births 2019 deaths