38  Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly Summer 2011

of Albion in relation to the writing of Mary Wollstonecraft 
and the analogies she draws between slavery and marriage. 
Although alert to the points of disagreement between Blake 
and Wollstonecraft, who occupied quite distinct positions 
on the matter of sexual liberation, Stevens provides a fasci-
nating exploration of Blake’s unorthodox belief that slavery 
caused suffering not only to those enslaved but to their mas-
ters. Via a close reading of Blake’s treatment of the body and 
the language employed by Wollstonecraft, Stevens constructs 
a forceful argument for reevaluating Visions in light of late-
eighteenth-century politics, both domestic and international.

The complexity of Blake’s political and cultural positioning 
is further drawn out in Saree Makdisi’s fascinating examina-
tion of the concepts of unity and difference and David Fuller’s 
essay on the Divine Comedy images, while the intricate web-
bing of patronage, heritage, and homage is sensitively exam-
ined by Andrew Loukes in reference to Blake’s portraits of po-
ets. Other authors offer evidence of Blake’s engagement with 
cultural trends, in particular Jared Richman, who considers 
the wide popularity of Milton’s poetry and Blake’s peculiarly 
biographical interest in him. This approach is developed by 
Martin Myrone, who skillfully situates Blake’s interest in the 
supernatural and the sublime in the context of a contempo-
rary vogue for the Gothic, while insisting upon the particular-
ity of his practice. There is also a welcome passage on Blake’s 
immediate predecessors by William Pressly, in which the art-
ist is seen as the legatee of a specifically British tradition.

This theme of national heritage is also treated by Robin Si-
mon in his discussion of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. 
Simon interprets Blake’s engagement with familiar symbols of 
British identity as a means by which the artist introduced the 
quotidian or colloquial into a visionary language, by adopting 
the informal idiom of Wordsworth, or through reference to 
the game of cricket. Although the implication that a sense of 
national pride can be found in Blake’s work is unconvincing, 
Simon offers an interesting consideration of Blake’s aesthetic 
choices and the way in which they embodied a rejection of 
Reynolds’s theories of art.

Simon’s close reading of Blake’s pictures, however, is an ex-
ception which points up one of the problems of the catalogue: 
the concentration upon Blake’s writing. While Simon and 
some others tackle Blake’s symbolic visual imagery, a large 
number of the essays, among them some of the most engag-
ing, are entirely dedicated to the poems, or gesture towards 
the images only as illustrations. Naturally, a great deal of ex-
planation and interpretation is needed in introducing a non-
English-speaking audience to Blake as an author. While it may 
be of great interest to consider the effect of translating Blake’s 
work into French, or the prophetic nature (or otherwise) of 
Europe and America, it is arguable, however, whether this is 
the place to do so. This is not to demand a strict separation of 
text from image, which would be contrary to the nature of the 
works themselves; when faced with so vast a subject it may 
perhaps have been more helpful to have limited discussion to 

the objects on display, of which there were more than enough 
to furnish a rich investigation of Blake’s career.

This in turn flags another, and perhaps more serious, flaw: 
the inadequate and incoherent use of illustrations. Images are 
referred to throughout by catalogue number, which (as not all 
objects in the show are reproduced) leaves the reader search-
ing through pictures that are not in numerical order, and are 
rarely positioned in clear relation to the text. This is com-
pounded by inconsistency, when Martin Butlin (uniquely) 
decides to employ the numbering system from his catalogue 
The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake in order to direct 
readers to relevant (but unexhibited) works. With so varied 
a selection of themes, and very little clear structure to their 
arrangement, this added confusion is particularly keenly felt. 

Furthermore, the texts are too short to deal with their sub-
jects adequately, and too often the writers seem to have been 
trapped into oversimplification, as in the case of David Al-
exander, who discusses Blake’s relationships with his patrons 
with no critical look at the artist’s investment in establishing 
a reputation as romantic outsider, or Elizabeth C. Denlinger, 
whose study of Catherine Blake reads as an unsatisfactorily 
token gesture towards a forgotten partner. In essence, while 
the questions raised by the catalogue are apposite, and many 
essays introduce themes that have not been dealt with in the 
French literature on Blake, it might have been more produc-
tive to have limited the overall length of the text and included 
a fuller bibliography for those who wanted to explore further. 
This would then have provided the space for what would re-
ally have stimulated an enthusiasm for Blake’s pictures: high- 
quality reproductions of the works themselves, clearly ar-
ranged to allow for comparison and cross-referencing. With-
out these, the catalogue can only help to reinforce the notion 
that Blake’s true achievement was literary, and his images 
merely illustrative or incidental.

ThIS concise study of Blake’s religion starts from the re-
cent work done on Blake’s Moravian background and 

the possible overlaps between Moravianism and Swedenbor-
gianism. In the process, it seeks to elucidate what is meant 
by Blake’s radicalism, which, as the author points out, is 
a very slippery concept. The book starts with a rejection of  
E. P. Thompson’s theory that Blake’s mother was a Muggle-

Magnus Ankarsjö.  William Blake and Religion: A 
New Critical View.  Jefferson: McFarland & Com-
pany, 2009.  viii + 163 pp.  $39.95, paperback.

Reviewed by Christopher Rowland



Summer 2011 Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly  39

been brought out more, rather than being confined to the final 
chapter on utopianism. The book’s title seems to promise a 
broad review of Blake and religion, but in effect what we get is 
a rather narrowly focused discussion that omits key aspects of 
Blake’s concerns (the Bible, for example, and his understand-
ing of the person of Christ). Of course, the treatment of sexual 
matters itself points to Blake’s radicalism as far as religion is 
concerned. The maintenance of taboos about sex and gender 
is one of the key features of any religion, not least the main-
stream Christianity against which Blake reacted.

In affirming the importance of the discovery of Blake’s 
Moravian antecedents and exploring the implications for his 
religion, Ankarsjö makes some pertinent points and offers 
a useful digest of the state of play of neglected elements in 
the study of Blake’s religious background. Students will find 
the summary chapter on Unitarianism, Swedenborgianism, 
and Moravianism helpful. Ankarsjö reminds us of the often 
mysterious and complex religious world from which Blake 
emerged and to which he reacted, much of which remained in 
his theological bloodstream.

tonian and a consideration of the links with Unitarianism, 
Swedenborgianism, and Moravianism, but these last two 
loom largest, as they do throughout the rest of the book. The 
following chapter considers Blake’s religion, moving from a 
treatment of some of the poems in Blake’s Notebook via the 
apocalyptic passages in The Four Zoas to Milton and Jerusa-
lem. There are interesting comments on the powerfully ef-
fective juxtaposition of sex and religion, which gives some of 
Blake’s lines such a radical feel. Ankarsjö explores Blake’s use 
of apocalyptic religion, especially the sense of climactic unity 
as male and female are united in the entry into Paradise. The 
chapter ends with a suggestion that the emphasis on the for-
giveness of sins might be explained by Blake’s temptation to 
have an amorous affair with Nancy Flaxman, leading to his 
very personal interest in forgiveness.

Ankarsjö explores the intertwining of sex and religion more 
thoroughly in the central chapter on Blake’s sexuality, which 
considers sexual elements throughout the Blake corpus. here 
the supposed Moravian influence is especially brought out, 
with some interesting comments made about familiar poems, 
not least the “challenging and daring” “I Saw a Chapel All of 
Gold” (75-76), as well as the preoccupation with the blood of 
Christ (John 19.34), found particularly in “The Grey Monk.” 
Echoes of Moravian and Swedenborgian material are traced 
in Visions of the Daughters of Albion. As already noted, escha-
tological union is a feature of Blake’s later major works, echo-
ing the kind of climax that we find in the Book of Revelation 
in the New Testament. In some ways the material here retrac-
es issues that the author has already enunciated in consider-
ing Blake’s religion. The final chapter, entitled “Blake’s Utopian 
‘Colony,’” looks at plans to set up a Swedenborgian utopian 
community in Sierra Leone, with a mix of sexual and utopian 
idealism, reflected in The Book of Thel, though with Blake’s re-
jection of the patriarchal overtones. Throughout the book, the 
Swedenborgian elements that Ankarsjö identifies in the later 
works are less compelling than those found in the early ones.

Despite its somewhat discursive style, this book is an inter-
esting read, not least in exploring neglected areas of the Blake 
corpus to show how Swedenborgianism and Moravianism 
may have influenced Blake’s mental world. The definition of 
radicalism emerges from the content of the book and is fo-
cused on the attitude towards sexual issues. This may be a 
component of Blake’s religion, but it does not by any means 
represent its entirety, and it would have been helpful to see 
whether the various strands of antinomian biblical interpreta-
tion support the views taken in the book. We know from the 
history of apocalypticism that for centuries thinkers have ap-
propriated apocalyptic images in order to understand individ-
ual psychological development. In early Christian interpreta-
tion of Revelation we find interpreters like Methodius and 
Tyconius relating the images either to the religious life of the 
individual or the struggle of the ecclesial community. Such 
elements have their echoes in Blake’s work. The impact of this 
kind of understanding in terms of wider society could have 

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