Jerusalem The Emanation Of The Giant Albion A Poem With Illustrations By W Blake

The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during the unknown years of Jesus. The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian Church in general, and the English Church in particular, has long used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace. In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake implies that a visit by Jesus would briefly create heaven in England, in contrast to the "dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution. Blake's poem asks questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christ's visit. Thus the poem merely implies that there may, or may not, have been a divine visit, when there was briefly heaven in England. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

"The nature of William Blake's genius and of his art is most completely expressed in his Illuminated Books. In order to give full and free expression to his vision Blake invented a method of printing that enabled him to created works in which words and images combine to form pages uniquely rich in content and beautiful in form. It is only through the pages as originally conceived and published by the poet himself that Blake's meaning can be fully experienced."--Publisher's description.

The epic poem Jerusalem was in Blake's own opinion his masterpiece. It is the last of the great prophetic books. Originally produced as an engraved book of 100 pages (only one copy of which was every fully finished in the colouring), the poem develops and unifies many of the themes Blake had been exploring in earlier works. It is a complex and powerful work, full of dramatic imagery and sublime poetry. You might think of it like a poetic version of a Wagner opera. This is poetry as if your life depended on it. It is amazing how contemporary to us it feels if you compare it to what was being produced at the time. You can see in this work how it has inspired writers like Phillip Pullman in his Northern Lights trilogy. The edition read here is the first printed version of the poem - which was impossibly hard to read in the original. This then was the first opportunity to really explore it. In his introduction Blake implies that the way to experience this work is to read it aloud rather than in your head. I can only agree and this opens another dimension to what was alreay a textual and pictorial artwork.

This carefully crafted ebook: "Jerusalem (Illuminated Manuscript with the Original Illustrations of William Blake)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during the unknown years of Jesus. The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian Church in general, and the English Church in particular, has long used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace. In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake implies that a visit by Jesus would briefly create heaven in England, in contrast to the "dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution. Blake's poem asks questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christ's visit. Thus the poem merely implies that there may, or may not, have been a divine visit, when there was briefly heaven in England. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

Originally produced in 1793, Visions of the Daughters of Albion has become one of Blake's most widely read and interpreted prophecies. The main character is a liberation figure challenging not only male chauvinism and marriage but the institution of slavery and imperialism in general. The female protagonist Oothoon, a sex slave who is raped by the slave driver Bromion, is clearly made to represent both the fertile, virginal and innocent lands of the pre-colonialism New World and the oppression of the women of Blake's time, who were, like slaves, treated as property of their husbands. In the course of his poem Oothoon becomes the ultimate symbol for liberation both as a woman and as a slave. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

Susanne Sklar engages with the interpretive challenges of William Blake's illuminated epic poem Jerusalem by considering it as a piece of visionary theatre - an imaginative performance in which characters, settings, and imagery are not confined by mundane space and time - allowing readers to find coherence within its complexities.