Constructive Vision and Visionary Deconstruction

Focusing on the tension in William Blake's poetry between a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutics of belief, this work offers a new account of the way in which Blake's major prophecies work. The author redefines the role of Los and Jesus in Blake's work, emphasizing Blake's prophetic intent.

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`Short copy entry, for Eng Lit 91'

This book focuses on the tension in Blake's poetry between a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutics of belief: it offers a new account of the way in which Blake's major prophecies work and of the stratagems they employ to consolidate error and so open their readers' eyes to `otherness'. Central to Peter Otto's reading is a re-definition of the role of Los and Jesus in Blake's work, emphasising Blake's prophetic intent. In the course of a radically new reading of Milton and Jerusalem, it is argued that in these poems the autonomous, world-forming imagination (that is staple to many accounts of Romanticism) is subject to visionary deconstruction. Rather than subordinating existence to perception, Blake's poems attempt to induce their readers to act. Constructive Vision is the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of Blake's work to draw on a radically new understanding of Blake's view of humanity.