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Blake’s The marriage of heaven and hell

Blake’s The marriage of heaven and hell . “One law for the lion & ox is oppression.”. context. Blake composed Marriage in response to the French Revolution. Blake supported the Revolution and wanted England to release its repressed revolutionary energy too.

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Blake’s The marriage of heaven and hell

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  1. Blake’sThe marriage of heaven and hell “One law for the lion & ox is oppression.”

  2. context • Blake composed Marriagein response to the French Revolution. • Blake supported the Revolution and wanted England to release its repressed revolutionary energy too. • Blake felt that spiritual, creative, sexual, and political energies were pent-up because of the emphasis on logic and reason, as well as conventional morality and institutional religious practices.

  3. Good and evil in marriage • The book describes a Blake-like narrator visiting Hell. • Blake’s Hell is not a place of punishment, but a place of unrepressed energy, opposed to the strict and regulated Heaven. • Marriage challenges established ideas of right and wrong by inverting the conventional moral categories of good and evil. • Devils are quicker, wittier, bolder, and more exciting than the angels, who lose every argument with the devils. Angels are often vain and dull. • Attacks the unimaginative and simplistic established Christianity which favors the passive and repressive “good” instead of the active and liberating “evil.”

  4. Contraries, not opposites • Marriage displays how Blake did not believe in opposites, but in contraries. • Each person reflects the contrary nature of God, and that progression in life is impossible without contraries. • According to Blake, two types of people exist: • “Energetic creators" = devils • “Rational organizers” = angels • Both types of people are necessary for progression.

  5. Proverbs of hell • The Proverbs of Hell are the most famous part of the book. • These display a very different kind of wisdom from the Biblical Book of Proverbs. • Blake’s proverbs are provocative and paradoxical with the purpose of energizing thought. • Many of Blake’s proverbs have become famous.

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