ABSTRACT
W. B. Yeats in 1893 interpreted William Blake's "Symbolic System" by referring to the mixture of esoteric lore he himself had been exposed to: Blavatsky, the Cabbala and the Rosicrucians. In "Blake's Treatment of the Archetype", Northrop Frye refers to Blake's work as "one of the hottest poetic crucibles of modern times." Yeats may have sought the source of Blake's symbols in theosophy and the Cabbala but Frye's source is literature itself. Frye's "hottest poetic crucible" is symbol-rich and not allegory-rich. Interesting questions arise regarding the degree to which Blake's myth is archetypal and the degree to which Blake is determined by the archetype. In the final analysis the breadth of symbolism in Blake's work is the breadth of interests in Blake the man. The breadth of symbolism in Blake's work is also the breadth of interests in Blake's reader.
