Context

• Blake's 3 pronged protest

  • attack on teachings of church
  • attack in rational, single vision of world & promotion of complex way of perception
  • offer of an alternative vision for future - recaptured ethos of eden
• Blake quote for hypocrisy of institutions

  'Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion' - Proverbs of Hell
• 'Without contraries is no progression'


  • from 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell'
  • Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence
  • everything must be questioned - everything has flip side
  • we can feel it all and so we must feel it all 
• Urizen

  • Name Blake gives to God in old testament 
  • Separates body & soul, then demonises the body, hating and banning sex
  • Is a tyrant - god who tricked adam & eve into fall & curses them for disobedience 
  • Constraints universe w compasses (refer to picture)
• 'Excessive joy weeps' - proverbs of hell