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"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom": alternative economies of excess in Blake's continental prophecies.(William Blake)

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From: Papers on Language & Literature
Date: 20060101
Author:Castellano, Katey

The immense social and political turmoil accompanying the French Revolution prompted William Blake to reactivate a religious and political tradition, antinomian religious dissent, that had been actively repressed in British history. Blake's energetic revival of his religious heritage in the Continental prophecies--America, Europe, and The Song of Los (1793-95)--allows a reading of his politics in the prophecies as both traditionalist and conservative. This claim complicates the long-established reading of Blake's radicalism as emerging from the secular Joseph Johnson circle, which ...

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