The Mythology and The Prophetic Books
Scholarship on Blake has not recovered a 'perfected' version of Blake's myth. The characters in it have to be treated more like a repertory company, capable of dramatising his ideas (which changed, over two decades). On the other hand the psychological roots of his work have been revealed, and are now much more accessible (with study) than they were a century ago.
America, a Prophecy is also one of the "prophetic works". Here, the "soft soul" of America appears as Oothoon.
Other works concerning this pantheon:
- America a Prophecy
- The Book of Urizen
- The Book of Los
- The Book of Ahania
- Visions of the Daughters of Albion
Read more about this topic: William Blake's Mythology
Famous quotes containing the words mythology, prophetic and/or books:
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)