ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the archetypal structure of Blake’s myth as the medium through which to interpret the illustrations of The Divine Comedy. Blake had always admired Dante, and thanks to a commission by John Linnell, he was able to devote the last years of his life to drawing a series of 102 illustrations, worked on between 1824 and 1827. Although Blake never completed the project, it seems likely, judging from internal evidence, that he intended to follow the procedure established in revising The Gates of Paradise and the Job illustrations, that is, to mediate The Divine Comedy through the narrative components of the esoteric myth that were consolidated in Jerusalem: purpose, medium, point of view, setting, characterization and plot.
