Ault sees Barks creating a surreal environment for the Disney characters in which what happens Ault's forays into 'Comic Studies' revolve around his encounter with Barks' work on Donald Duck. Donald Ault and Donald DuckĪult also worked closely with Disney comic artist Carl Barks and participated in a number of interviews with him. 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.'' 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. After reading Narrative Unbound, Jerome McGann 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 also published the most exhaustive book on Blake's visionary poem Vala called Narrative Unbound: Re-Visioning William Blake's The Four Zoas. The book won wide acclaim among Blake critics, and quickly became a foundational book in the field. Ault's first book Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton, an extended version of his dissertation, dealt with the complex relationship between Blake and Newton. At Berkeley in 1972–74, he instituted curriculum changes by creating English 176 (“Literature and Popular Culture”) and English 177 (“Literature and Philosophy”). Working with William BlakeĪult's interests are wide and include everything from Romantic poetry to psychophysics, holography, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, typography, mathematical notation, and the history of animation. Since then, he has taught at University of California, Berkeley, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Florida.

Donald Ault graduated from the University of Chicago in 1968, after completing work on his dissertation tracing the conflict between British physicist Sir Isaac Newton and William Blake.

Visionary Physics by Donald Ault