Milton, Blake, and God

WHO WAS JOHN MILTON?

1608-1674

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) and The New Reform

Army

Aeropagitica 1644

Paradise Lost 1667

Blank Verse and Religious Traditions

The Verse “The Measure is English Heroic Verse

without Rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; the Rhyme being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age…”

Poetry and Theodicy

Instruct me for thou know’st; Thou from the first/ Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread/ Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss/ And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark/ Illumine, what is low raise and support;/ That to the heighth of this great Argument/ I may assert Eternal Providence/ and justify the ways of God to men.

Milton’s Godhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iZhLDo09D68

God’s “Umpire Conscience”“Thus while God spake,ambrosial fragrancefill’d / All Heaven”

Some I have chose of peculiar Grace/ Elect above the rest; So is my will: / The rest shall Hear me call…/ To pray, repent, And bring obedience due… / And I will place within them as a guide/ My Umpire Conscience…To expiate his Treason…The rigid satisfaction, death for death.

The Romantic Obsession with Paradise Lost

William Blake: Engraver, Poet, Painter, Visionary 1757-1827

Blake’s Illustrations of Milton’s Paradise Lost

Emanuel Swedenborg and Blake

1688-1772

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The Text-Image & Laocoön

Blake’s God & Popular Culturehttp://Johnny Depp- William Blake

Blake and Allen Ginsberg

http://Blake and Ginsberg

http://Nurse's Song

http://Howl