William Blake in Popular Culture - Literature

Literature

Blake's illustrated books were much imitated in the early twentieth century, and the emergence of radical ideas about alternative futures heightened the appeal of Blake's prophetic literature. Aldous Huxley took up the idea of The Doors of Perception, in a 1954 book of the same name about mind expansion through ingestion of mescaline. C. S. Lewis took up the theme of Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in the preface of his book The Great Divorce, in which he describes Blake as a "great genius." William Butler Yeats edited a collection of Blake's poetry and considered himself the inheritor of his poetic mission.

Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun (1806-1809) and the poem "Auguries of Innocence" both play a prominent role in Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon (1981), in which the killer Francis Dolarhyde has an obsession with the painting. Dolarhyde imagines himself 'becoming' a being like the Red Dragon featured in the paintings. In Hannibal, a copy of Blake's painting The Ancient of Days is owned by Mason Verger, a reference to Verger's Urizenic qualities.

Blake and his wife Kate are the major characters in Ray Nelson's science fiction novel Blake's Progress (1975), which subsequently was extensively rewritten and republished as Timequest (1985). William Blake's mapping of London in Jerusalem inspired London psychogeography in the work of novelist Iain Sinclair, biographer Peter Ackroyd and poet Aidan Dun, and his epic Milton a Poem was adapted by J. G. Ballard's 1979 novel, The Unlimited Dream Company.

Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988) contains a brief episode in which the characters discuss Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Blake is described by Philip Pullman as one of three major literary influences on His Dark Materials, along with Heinrich von Kleist and John Milton. Pullman's stated intention was to invert Milton's story of a war between heaven and hell in the light of Blake's famous comment that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it". Pullman stated that he "is of the Devil's party and does know it."

Ed Bemand's novel Beheld (2006) refers to both "The Fly" and "The Tyger" and describes ideas of perception inspired by Blake's work. The Blakean city Beulah is featured in Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve (1977) as an underground site for a female religious cult. Blake is a character in Tracy Chevalier's novel Burning Bright (2007), which centres on a family who live next door to him in Lambeth while he is writing Songs of Experience.

Alfred Bester's 1956 science-fiction novel The Stars My Destination was originally titled Tiger! Tiger! after Blake's poem "The Tyger" - which also appears on the first page of the book.

In Orson Scott Card's series The Tales of Alvin Maker, William Blake was depicted under the name "Taleswapper."

David Almond's Carnegie Medal-winning children's novel Skellig, a story about a 12-year-old boy named Michael and his meeting with a strange, angel-like creature, refers to Blake often. In the novel, the child Mina and her parents are proponents of Blake. Mina has a strong relationship to animals and "The Tyger" is quoted.

Many of the names of characters from Blake's myths are used in Philip José Farmer's World of Tiers books, including Urizen, Los, Orc, and Anana. This mythology is referred to by the characters in the stories (mainly in The Gates of Creation, Red Orc's Rage, and More than Fire). There is also a character based on Blake's painting "The Ghost of a Flea".

Similarly, in Crawford Kilian's novel The Fall of the Republic, when a gateway is found to a parallel world equivalent to 18th-century Earth, it is named Beulah, and other worlds at different points in the timestream are named for other Blake entities, such as Orc, Ahania, Los, Urthona, Thel, and Tharmas. In particular, a future world whose atmosphere has been devastated by unknown forces is called Ulro.