Constructive Vision and Visionary Deconstruction: Loss, Eternity and the Productions of Time in the Later Poetry of William Blake

Focusing on the tension in Blake's poetry between doubt and belief, this book offers a new account of the way Blake's major prophecies work and of the strategies they employ. Offering a radically new reading of Milton and Jerusalem, Otto argues that the autonomous, world-forming imagination is subject to visionary deconstruction. He demonstrates that rather than subordinating existence to perception, the poems attempt to induce their readers to action.