In these 1980s essays, Adams applies a "neo-Blakean" perspective to criticisms of writers including Yeats, Joyce and Byron and to various topics of literary theory, relating points raised to issues of education policy. Thus criticism both informs, and is informed by, teaching practice.

We see the personality of the critic, his theories, and his practical suggestions for curriculum elaborated in a way that is mutually illuminating across the conventional compartmentalizations of academic experience. Thus Blake's poetry serves less as an object of study than as a resource for thinking about literature and the discipline of literature study. The result is a thought-provoking cohesion of linguistic theory, practical literary and cultural criticism, and liberating educational theory.