21 pages • 42 minutes read

The Book of Thel

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1789

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context

William Blake, posthumously, became a major British Romantic figure, and is often considered the beginning of the Romantic literary movement in England. He presented radical political and esoteric philosophy that later writers of the 19th century developed. Perhaps most significantly, Blake emphasized the idea that poetry should spring from an inspired origin.

The Book of Thel is part of Blake’s prophetic literature. Blake claimed to receive visions from angels; in a letter written to John Flaxman in 1800, Blake said he heard the voices of “Celestial inhabitants.” From these visions, Blake would often rewrite or create Christian and Christian-adjacent mythology. Prophetic literature is a genre that existed for centuries before Blake in many different cultures. In this genre, the poet or writer is merely a conduit for the divine. Prophetic literature became less common after the Enlightenment and the rise of secular thought, but vestiges of it remain in automatic writing and other oracular forms of poetry that exist in modern literature.

Artistic Context

Blake is well known for his illuminated books, which are a form of visual poetry as well as visual art. Alongside being a writer, Blake was an accomplished visual artist skilled in drawing, painting, engraving, and printing. After learning and practicing intaglio etching, he invented relief etching, which he used in most of his illuminated books. This innovative technique allowed for painting with an acid-resistant varnish on copperplate rather than scratching the metal plate itself.

The images in The Book of Thel offer at least two insights about the written text. First, they visually represent the anthropomorphizing of the symbolic characters of Lilly, Cloud, Worm, and the Clod of Clay; these creatures look like luminescent humans in the illustrations that accompany the text. Lilly even wears a dress that resembles Thel’s dress, and they exhibit the human musculature that Blake is fond of drawing.

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Second, the perspective of the engraved illustrations changes. When Cloud enters the poem, there is a different perspective of Thel standing between the flowers and a tree than the previous illustration. This shows the movement from the earth-bound Lilly to the sky. Then, the perspective zooms in so far that the tree Thel stands next to cannot be seen as she talks with the Clod of Clay bowing over Worm. Visually, this movement tracks the theme of the expansiveness of God’s love: it encompasses the sky, earth, and what lies below.