Abstract
Blake’s recently discovered votes for Charles James Fox in the 1790 Westminster election represent his only recorded electoral participation.1 Such records rarely reveal nuanced ideological positions, but Blake’s support for Fox suggests his politics were complex, not simply always radical. This chapter contextualises Blake’s votes and shows how The French Revolution (1791) dramatises problems of representing ‘the people’ politically, drawing upon Enlightenment critiques of superstition to demystify ancien regime France. The poem encodes political and philosophical positions in the imagery of apotheosis, an analysis of which reveals tension between Blake’s Whiggish and more radical tendencies.
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