Abstract
Blake's texts lose their innocence more easily than most, and like Adam and Eve they do so by knowing Good and Evil, by finding a wider oppositional context in which a truth is split into its dynamic contraries. The Fall of Man in Paradise Losthas its equivalent in the critical act: to cross the boundary into illegitimate knowledge, moving out from what is present, fitting and needful, to "things remote / From use, obscure and subtle" (book 8, ll. 191-2) is to risk entering the "wrong" context. By these terms, an innocent text can easily fall, unless the knowledge brought to bear on it is licensed and regulated. A concept like Songs of Innocence, therefore, raises in an acute form the critical problem of howtext and context interrelate: how far can a text legitimise a context for itself, withinwhich a "valid" reading is produced? Must Songs of Innocencebe read innocently?
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