Abstract

The thought of William Blake and Jacques Lacan offers interesting points of intersection, beginning with Blake's method of reversed writing as mode of production and Lacan's postulation of a mirror-stage during human development. Blake's illuminated texts promote mirror-stage encounters with his readers, which require the formation of self-consciousness before a self-conscious text. Blake's anticipation of Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts begins in this mirror-stage and is traced in relation to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In The Four Zoas, Blake attempts to radically redefine epic conventions as established by ancient writers like Homer and Virgil, a move against epic that speaks to Lacanian notions of the Symbolic order as the field of consciousness promoted by culture. Blake attempts to subvert this order through the play of word and design in his two prophecies, Milton and Jerusalem. In Milton, Blake attacks the Symbolic order as the valorization of what Lacan terms the Name-of-the-Father. In Jerusalem, this attack leads to the exploration of feminine sexuality, since women are barred from discourse in language itself, where language is the privileged domain of phallocratic relations cast in the image of the masculine