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Essay on Milton and Blake
This paper is a comparison between John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and William Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell". It basically explains how Milton and how this influence can be witnessed in this writing, by comparing passages between the two works, influence Blake.
In Milton's Paradise Lost, he writes the tale of the fall of Satan, his cohorts, and mankind. A lot of critics often view Satan as the unlikely or tragic hero of the epic poem. Satan is, obviously, the main character throughout most of the poem, but not necessarily the hero. Satan's main purpose is to fight God, and try to be on the same level as Him. The important thing is to realize that Satan is sin, and being humans, who are all born into sin, we can easily relate to a sinful character. God is holy and perfect.
This is something, which we, being fallible humans, cannot begin to comprehend. Milton's overall reputation at the end of the seventeenth century did not bode well for the sale of his literary works. First it suffered from his political views, and Paradise Lost came under intense literary criticism for not following conventional poetic standards. Nevertheless, he did have a small, but vocal group of supporters who would later expand his status beyond simple esteem. (Baker, Deirdre)
Conversely William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" is one of his farsighted books, a series of texts written in replication of biblical books of divine, but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and radical beliefs. Like his other books it was published as printed sheets from plates etched with both texts and illustrations. Blake and his wife Catherine then colored the plates. It is probably the most influential of Blake's works. Its vision of a dynamic relationship between a stable 'Heaven' and a dynamic 'Hell' has fascinated theologians, aestheticians and psychologists. It has also inspired many artists and musicians. It was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical ferment immediately after the French Revolution. (The Hutchinson Encyclopedia)...................
