Theprophetic books of the 18th-centuryEnglish poet and artistWilliam Blake are a series of lengthy, interrelated poetic works drawing uponBlake's own personal mythology. They have been described by 20th-century criticNorthrop Frye as forming "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".[1] While Blake worked as a commercial illustrator, these books were ones that he produced, with his own engravings, as an extended and largely private project.
In these works, concluding with the epicJerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion, he elaborated a personalinvented mythology (mythopoeia). The mythopoeia is largely Biblical in inspiration; apart from that, it has been extensively debated for both its political and religious content.
WhileThe French Revolution from 1791 is not illustrated and is usually excluded from the list of prophetic books,David V. Erdman contends that the separation of this work from the corpus removes a key to the symbolism used by Blake.[2] Another work,Vala, or The Four Zoas (1797), begun while Blake was residing in Felpham, was abandoned in draft form; of this abandoning by Blake, Northrop Frye has commented that "[a]nyone who cares about poetry or painting must see in [Vala's] unfinished state a major cultural disaster".[3]
The prophetic books have on occasion been dismissed as lacking in good sense. This position is now rarely held by scholars ofEnglish literature, Blake having been one of the major beneficiaries of critical fashion during the twentieth century.[citation needed]Northrop Frye and, following him,Harold Bloom have suggested that the difficulty of reading Blake's prophetic works can be overcome, and that the dismissive "mystical" tag applied to them is largely an obfuscation. "Mystical" as to the poetic language has indeed been the equivalent of "visionary" applied to the engravings.[citation needed]
Blake's prophetic books, having often been dismissed until recent times, have had a tortuous publication history, unlike hislyric poems, which have been regarded as more direct and relatively unproblematic.[citation needed]
The cycle ofcontinental prophecies comprisesAmerica a Prophecy (1793),Europe a Prophecy (1794) andThe Song of Los (1795), which is made up of sectionsAfrica andAsia.
America a Prophecy is divided into aPreludium (which is part of theOrc myth) andA Prophecy, which has obvious political content devolving from theAmerican Revolution.[citation needed] The first line ofA Prophecy is repeated as the final line ofAfrica. On the other hand,Europe a Prophecy has an unnamed introductory section, aPreludium with Orc andEnitharmon, andA Prophecy with connections to the contemporary situation of wartime Europe. TheAsia section ofThe Song of Los links onto the end ofEurope a Prophecy (via the word "howl").[citation needed]