ABSTRACT

William Blake's visionary epic Milton surpasses in difficulty any work considered in the previous chapters. While the central character, the dead poet John Milton, is clearly recognizable, what happens in the poem's two books and forty-three plates yields significant meaning only to readers who possess specialized knowledge of Blake's unique mythology. Fortunately, previous analyses of the poem, especially those by Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom, help build a foundation for the reading that I wish to propose. 1 This chapter begins with the basic similarities between Blake's system of thought and Jung's psychology, adumbrates Blake's cosmology and the poem's organizational scheme, and then presents an analysis of the poem's main actions with emphasis on Jungian interpretation. On that foundation, Blake's life and letters are used to argue that Milton, as a metaphysical statement by a psychic writer, proposes ways of seeing that are consistent with many of the conclusions reached in chapters 1 through 8.