# 🐜 Blakean Entomology: Small Lives, Uncertain Bodies, and the Work of Attention **Daniel Ari Friedman** (2026) · *Zenodo* [](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23900582) --- ## Abstract > How do Blake's small lives make another being's needs matter? This article argues that provision, feeding and aggregation give different forms to that question: help can enable another life, appetite can use it, and a collective body can redistribute its powers. Copy-specific readings of four short poems, nine selected historical scans and bounded prophetic and prose passages test this account against symbolic, spiritual and human-centered alternatives. The emmet's offered route, the fly's reciprocal likeness and the Worm/infant comparison become visual arguments in which the complete impression remains beside the exact words, a rival reading and a limit on biological identification. A reproducible concordance supplies breadth without turning retrieval into a bestiary: 102 categories yield 36,039 category-source-span candidates in 2,067 captured units; 2,498 belong to 199 identified Blake-primary reading units. Within that scope, 82 name-family categories supply 1,239 candidates. Pooled and equal nonempty-group compositions differ by total variation 0.222387 across 26 positive groups. Source-role contrasts, finite proximity experiments and recorded reading windows expose dependence on particular inputs. The contextual ledger contains 47 authored decisions and leaves 35,992 candidates unreviewed. These measures describe a search and its selective examination, not animal prevalence or complete-oeuvre coverage. Baine's biological-symbolic scholarship, accessed here through a contemporary review, makes contextual variability a continuing challenge. The argument locates ethical force in particular acts of hearing, sustaining, injuring and joining; neither a shared name nor a modern lineage determines that force. ## Keywords `William Blake` · `digital humanities` · `entomology` · `source provenance` ## Methods - **Copy-specific close reading** — Read poems, selected historical scans and bounded prophetic/prose passages while retaining rival interpretations and biological-identification limits. - **Reproducible concordance with contextual review** — Use a broad concordance as a retrieval surface and distinguish candidates from individually adjudicated readings. ## Key Findings - The contextual ledger contains 47 authored decisions; 35,992 candidates remain unreviewed. - The numerical retrieval scope does not establish animal prevalence or complete-oeuvre coverage. _Methods and findings are summarized from the full text; each item is backed by a verbatim quote recorded in `metadata.json` (`evidence`, `key_findings_evidence`)._ ## Artifacts - GitHub repository: [docxology/Blakean_Entomology](https://github.com/docxology/Blakean_Entomology) - GitHub release: [v1.0.0](https://github.com/docxology/Blakean_Entomology/releases/tag/v1.0.0) - DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.23900582](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23900582) - Artifact DOI: [10.5281/zenodo.23900583](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23900583) - Zenodo record: [https://zenodo.org/records/23900582](https://zenodo.org/records/23900582) - Current PDF (Zenodo, version 1.0.0): [Blakean_Entomology.pdf](https://zenodo.org/api/records/23900583/files/Blakean_Entomology.pdf/content) - Extracted text retains its own source provenance; a matching filename does not establish edition identity. - PDF SHA-256: fc99a3dd629646a6e7cb1b41e0b6290388cbb4a09d7c0f91526e0c413dddf73a ## Citation > Daniel Ari Friedman (2026). *Blakean Entomology: Small Lives, Uncertain Bodies, and the Work of Attention*. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23900582. URL: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23900582. ## Related - [Full Bibliography](../../pages/BIBLIOGRAPHY.md) - [All Papers](../README.md)