BLAKE, SWEDENBORG, AND MUHAMMAD: THE PROPHETIC TRADITION, REVISITED

This essay historicizes Norman O. Brown's thesis that William Blake indirectly appropriated, and sought inspiration from, an Islamic-Gnostic (primarily Shi'ite) approach to successive prophetic revelation. Read alongside Emmanuel Swedenborg's mystical writings, Blake's scattered references to Islam suggest identification with the Prophet Muhammad and admiration for a polygamous Muslim heaven. The poet-artist's attitude toward the taking of second wives or concubines provides a theological rationale for why his poetry and art exalts Islam's sanctification of the body beyond what Swedenborg would have allowed, complicating postcolonial interpretations that either categorically praise or condemn Blake's engagement with the Orient. Representations of a split Islamic corpus, textual and corporeal, helped define his heterodox conceptions of embodied prophecy and religious enthusiasm.