ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on aspects of Romantic cultural production which involve representation of 'the body in fragments'. It examines the problematic question of Blake's responses to events in France: the military expansionism of the Girondin government, Robespierre's 'Republic of Virtue' and his cult of L'Etre supreme. The book offers a suggestive and provocative articulation of one vital element in current thinking about the nature and genesis of meaning in culture. It reviews the potent and pervasive tree symbolism of the Revolutionary period, and notes some hidden political resonances in the language of natural description. The book shows Blake responding to the Painean analysis of the relationship between power and religion and the process of distortion of the Christian message through the 'veil' of ceremonial in plates 5 and 10 of Europe.
