Doc Yoder's Notes
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake (1790-1792/3)
Direct link to this work in the Blake Archive
Plates 4, 7-10, 14-20, 25-27 have a later style of printing than the other plates.
Plate 2: The Argument: The Just Man, The Perilous Path and the Villain
Plate 3: A New Heaven and a New Earth
Plate 4: The Voice of the Devil: Bibles and Sacred Codes -- Errors and
Contraries
Plates 5-6: Critique of Paradise Lost; Milton was "a true Poet and of the Devils party
without knowing it."
Plates 6-10: Memorable Fancy I: Touring Hell -- The Proverbs of Hell
Plate 11: Creation of Priesthood
Plates 12-13: Memorable Fancy II: Dinner with Isaiah and Ezekiel
Plate 14: The Doors of Perception
Plate 15: Memorable Fancy III: Printing House of Hell
Plates 16-17: The Devourer and the Prolific
Plates 17-20: Memorable Fancy IV: Leviathan & and the Harper vs The Monkey House
and Aristotle's Analytics
Plate 21: The Attack on Swedenborg
Plates 22-24: Memorable Fancy V: The Devil and the Angel discuss Jesus and
reading in the infernal method
Plates 25-27: A Song of Liberty: first mention of "Urthona"; action anticipates Orc
in America
Some thought questions for the Marriage:
The Memorable Fancies are separated by discursive passages. How do these passages relate
to the Memorable Fancies? Do they derive from the ones that precede them, or introduce the
ones that follow them?
Blake presents various myths of origin in the Marriage. What is the point of these myths?
How do they compare with other myths of origin we have seen?
How does the world view of the Marriage differ from that of Rousseau or Locke?
What is the relationship between the imagination and divine inspiration implied by the
dinner party conversation with Isaiah and Ezekiel?
Do any of the perspectives in the poem seem to be consistently endorsed? Another way
to think of this might be to ask whether Blake ever speaks in his own voice in the tract, and if
so where, and how do you know?
What do you make of the Proverbs of Hell? What sort of place is it? Do we already
live there?
What is meant by reading in the "infernal method"?
At the end of the fourth Memorable Fancy, the narrator concludes that "We impose on
one another." Is there any remedy to such imposition, or must we simply end the
conversation as the narrator apparently does?
Why does Blake assume the Voice of the Devil? What has happened to God's voice?
(See question 1 above.)
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