The influence of the idea of evil from the bible, to "paradise lost" and to "the marriage of heaven and hell" : Blake's path to romanticism

Abstract

William Blake, an English poet, was a pre-Romantic poet who was not appreciated by many people at the time. The poet published a book known as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which I believe is a revolutionary work that introduces many Romantic elements, deeply appreciated by Romantic thinkers, especially in the poet’s explanation of evil and Satan. In his book The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom introduces what he calls the six revisionary ratios, which are six forms of misinterpretation that occur between a predecessor poet and a latter poet. I argue that Milton’s Paradise Lost is a misinterpretation of the Bible, and that Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a misinterpretation of the Bible, and Milton’s Paradise Lost as well as a revolutionary satire against the theologian Emmanuel Swedenborg’s religious influence. The aim of this project is to show, after the influence and misinterpretation, that Blake’s Marriage is a revolutionary piece against the passivity of the individual caused by the influence of religion, and that Romanticism is not merely restricted to the concepts of nature and the imagination.