ABOUT THIS BOOK

In a dramatically original analysis, Jackie DiSalvo explores Blake’s reworking of Genesis and Paradise Lost in his prophetic poem The Four Zoas, creating a compelling new reading of both Milton and Blake. With informed argument and provocative insights, DiSalvo shows how Blake’s view of history prefigures the revaluation of our own myths of origin prompted by new political, psychological, and feminist perspectives.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jackie DiSalvo is associate professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York.

REVIEWS

“This is the first book-length study of the relationship between Blake’s visionary epic The Four Zoas and the poem that most influenced it, Paradise Lost. . . . It is written with a compelling sense of the relevance of Milton and Blake to the twentieth century, and it expresses an intense conviction of the importance of critical debates about poetry.”
—Review of English Studies

“DiSalvo’s linking of Blake and Marx is brilliantly dashing, and will annoy the orthodox in both camps.”
—Christopher Hill

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Textual Note

1. Critical Introduction

Part I. Art Against Ideology

2. Milton and the Line of Prophecy

3. Blake's Philosophy: A "New Church" of the "Active Life"

4. Blake's Epic Art: "Historical Facts...Written by Inspiration"

Part II. A Myth of Origins

5. Milton and Genesis: Mythological Defamation

6. Blake's Genesis: Eden

7. Blake's Genesis: The Fall

Part III. Paradise Lost: A Blakean Reading

8. The Politics of Paradise Lost and The Four Zoas

9. The Politics of the Family

10. Epilogue

Notes

Index

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