ABSTRACT
In his historical approach to Blake, Erdman (item 129) attempts to locate Blake within his own time. To what extent, he asks, is Blake’s work comprehensible in terms of the political and social events of his day? He reconstructs that milieu so clearly that the reader can affix the importance of any event or person upon Blake, while at the same time apprehending the unique course of Blake’s own development. In Natural Supernaturalism , Abrams (item 945) describes the ways in which the Romantics, including Blake, secularized both traditional and esoteric religious thought. His description of the Hebrew Cabbala and Hermetic lore, both originating in the Bible, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism and pagan mythology, is presented in a way which illuminates Blake, although he, like Erdman, is not source-hunting:
