Blake, Ethics, and Forgiveness

For the last two decades, scholars who specialize in the poetry and art of William Blake have stressed the formal and historical dimensions of his aesthetic theories and practices. Such an emphasis neglects the ethical commitments that inform his work. Primary among these ethical commitments is Blake’s passionate advocacy of forgiveness between human beings as a means to solve the problem of human evil, an advocacy that seems to contradict Blake’s assertions that ethical laws create the illusion of human evil and employ the concept of “forgiveness” solely to reinforce the terms of the original oppression.

            Blake, Ethics, and Forgiveness focuses on an important and pervasive issue found in the work of the English Romantic visionary poet, engraver, and mystic William Blake. It treats the moral and literary problem of representing ethical or human forgiveness, as distinct from the divine forgiveness of human beings.