William Blake and Sex

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and visual artist early within the Romantic movement. Although both his textual and pictorial works have generally been regarded as complex and open to interpretation, the author argues that sexuality is perhaps the most notable component worthy of discussion when reading Blake. This book covers sex in Blake's works and Blake's personal views about sex, and offers a more general overview of sex in literature from the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. It includes a brief discussion of some of the more dated criticism of Blake and the matter of sex. The book then goes on to discuss, more specifically and in greater detail, the issue of sex in several of the longer and more complex of Blake's notable works, including The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem. A chapter is dedicated to each work, examining Blake's development of sexual issues. It concludes with notable examples of the omnipresent nature of sex in nearly all of Blake's art and poetry.