ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how Blake first disaggregated the visual from verbal before he generated the bi-modal narrative of Jerusalem. Specifically, he used the commission to illustrate Edward Young’s Night Thoughts as the opportunity to sketch out his myth. Despite its commercial origins, the project provided Blake with an expansive canvas on which to visualize the implications of his developing myth. Then, in The Four Zoas, he attempted to verbalize the visual. Because any interpretation of Blake’s early narrative is complicated by the interrelationship among the three texts, this discussion considers them together, using the basic elements of narrative (purpose, medium, point of view, setting, characterization and plot) as the basis for extrapolating the process by which Blake began to transform his symbolic form into an esoteric narrative.
