In the following essay, Mathews considers whether Blake's portrayal of Jesus in Jerusalem coincides with or refutes the orthodox Christian view of Jesus as savior.

In the following essay, Kiralis offers an interpretation of the symbolism in Blake's Jerusalem in order to elucidate this poem as well as other later prophetic writings, such as Milton and The Four Zoas.

An American educator, poet, and critic, Damon wrote several books on Blake's poetry, including William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols, a scholarly study that is considered one of the major works in Blake criticism. In the following excerpt taken from that book, Damon explicates The Four Zoas, presenting the poem as "the first and greatest complete expression of [Blake 's vision of the universe."]

Erdman is an American educator and the prize-winning author of several volumes of criticism on Blake, including Blake: Prophet against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His own Times (1977), which is valued by scholars as an insightful examination of contemporary historical references in Blake's poetry and art. Erdman is also editor of the acclaimed Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (1980). In the following essay, he stresses the value of considering the historical co...

In the following excerpt Margoliouth presents a stylistic and thematic overview of Blake's lyric poetry.

Youngquist is an American educator and the author of Madness and Blake's Myth. In the following psychoanalytic interpretation of Milton, he asserts that the poem is about "the ordeal of experiencing and mastering a pathological distortion of consciousness."

Gleckner is an American scholar who has produced many volumes of criticism on Blake's poetry. His book The Piper & the Bard (1959) is considered one of the major scholarly commentaries on Songs of Innocence and of Experience. In the following essay, Gleckner discusses the role of imagination and perception in Blake's mythological system and in his poetic technique.

In the following essay, Miner comments on the literary influences on "The Tyger" and the poem's relationship, thematically and symbolically, to Blake's later works.

A Canadian critic and editor, Frye is the author of the highly influential and controversial Anatomy of Criticism (1957), in which he argues that literary criticism can be scientific in its method and results and that judgments are not inherent in the critical process. Believing that literature is wholly structured by myth and symbol, Frye views the critic's task as the explication of work's archetypal characteristics. In the following essay, he uses Blake's "Introduction"...

Bloom is one of the most prominent contemporary American critics and literary theorists. In The Anxiety of Influence (1973), he formulated a controversial theory of literary creation called revisionism. Influenced strongly by Freudian theory, Bloom believes that all poets are subject to the influence of earlier poets and that, to develop their own voices, they attempt to overcome this influence through a process of misreading. By misreading, Bloom means a deliberate, personal revision of what has been said...

A nineteenth-century English poet, dramatist, and critic, Swinburne was renowned during his lifetime for his skill and technical mastery as a lyric poet and is currently regarded as a preeminent symbol of rebellion against the prevailing moral orientation of Victorian aesthetics. Blake scholars also recognize his contribution as the author of the first full-length critical study of the poet, William Blake: A Critical Essay, which was first published in 1868. In the following excerpt, taken from the 1906 ed...

The following excerpt appeared as the introduction to Malkin's book, A Father's Memoirs of his Child (1806) and is the earliest published essay on Blake. Malkin's enthusiastic discussion helped Blake's poetry gain acceptance among a wider contemporary audience.

Perhaps the most influential poet and critic to write in the English language during the first half of the twentieth century, Eliot is closely identified with many of the qualities denoted by the term Modernism: experimentation, formal complexity, artistic and intellectual eclecticism, and a classicist's view of the artist working at an emotional distance from his or her creation. He introduced a number of terms and concepts that strongly affected critical thought in his lifetime, among them the ide...

An English poet and critic, Coleridge was central to the English Romantic movement and is considered one of the greatest literary critics in the English language. Besides his poetry, his most important contributions include his formulation of Romantic theory, his introduction of the ideas of the German Romantics to England, and his Shakespearean criticism, which overthrew the last remnants of the Neoclassical approach to William Shakespeare and focused on Shakespeare as a masterful portrayer of human chara...