William Blake’s “The Book of Urizen” as aVision: Tradition and Innovation

Abstract

The article studies William Blake’s approach to the genre of vision and its conventions, viewing Blake as a romantic poet and the creator of his own mythopoetic universe. “The Book of Urizen”, the first one of Blake’s minor “prophetic books” reveals innovative features which Blake introduces to the tradition. Unlike medieval authors of visions, Blake emphasizes the importance of poetic imagination while keeping to his role of a medium and transmitter of the “supreme knowledge”. Although Blake focuses on sensual images (what is typical for the genre of vision), he makes the main character of the poem sensually unknowable, as if opposing him to his own narrative and the tradition of the genre in general. This unknowability of the character underlines Blake’s idea of the depravity and fatality of Urizen’s fate and his determination to destroy all vital existing oppositions, including the opposition of divine and human. Blake rejects the traditional didactic pathos of visions which is manifested, for example, by the fact that none of his characters has the absolute knowledge of the processes going around him. In his poem Blake rather condemns and warns, thus bringing us to the origins of the genre tradition – i.e., the prophetic books of the Old Testament.