ABSTRACT
Most critics have been offended by the enormous welter of detail that obscures, almost defiantly, the meaning of the prophetic books. Taking into account that Blake did not want to be easy, 1 in the following chapters I hope to cut through some of the non-essential padding to lay bare the underlying structure of what appears to me, naïvely perhaps, as primarily a story. It is an enthralling and coherent story when it is seen, as all narrative must be seen, as a dynamically unfolding whole. Oddly enough, or perhaps not so oddly, since the temptation to regard them as an esoteric puzzle is so obvious, the prophetic books have never before been examined as pure and simple narrative.
