Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The

By Blake, William

Book Id: WPLBN0002950403
Format Type:
File Size: 19.93 MB
Reproduction Date: 2012

Title:	Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The
Author:	Blake, William
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Poetry, Literature, Philosophy
Collections:	Audio Books Collection, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The
Historic Publication Date:	1793
Publisher:	LibriVox Audio Books


Citation APA MLA Chicago Blake, B. W. (1793). Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.us/

Description
The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution. The title is an ironic reference to Emanuel Swedenborg's theological work Heaven and Hell published in Latin 33 years earlier. Swedenborg is directly cited and criticized by Blake several places in the Marriage. Though Blake was influenced by his grand and mystical cosmic conception, Swedenborg's conventional moral structures and his Manichean view of good and evil led Blake to express a deliberately depolarized and unified vision of the cosmos in which the material world and physical desire are equally part of the divine order, hence, a marriage of heaven and hell. The book is written in prose, except for the opening Argument and the Song of Liberty. The book describes the poet's visit to Hell, a device adopted by Blake from Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Summary
Electronic recorded live performance of a reading

Excerpt
Literature, Philosophy, Satire, Poetry