William Blake and London: The Artist Visualising Jerusalem

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Blake was an unmistakably urban, and emphatically a London, poet and artist. His representations of themetropolis, however, constantly shift in his work: at points the city is the eternal 'City of God', and at others achaotic series of disconnected processes. This variety is reflected by contemporary London's drastic materialchanges ensuing from its commercial expansion, and by the proliferation of contemporary visualrepresentations of the city. Examining Blake in the context of London's visual print culture, this research willproduce distinctive new insights into his prophetic works, focusing in particular on areas that have been underresearched:London prospects; gateways and boundaries; and the city as process.Drawing on archival collections (i.e. British Museum, Metropolitan Archives, Society of Antiquaries) this PhDwill trace across Blake's oeuvre how his interactions with his city, as embodied in his texts, were mediated bycontemporary religious, economic, and especially visual cultures. While much critical work (e.g. Michael) hasapproached the city in Blake's works, his engagement with visual print culture representations of Londonremains under-explored. This thesis will show how the various iterations of London encountered by Blakemanifest themselves in his representations and conceptualisations of urban spaces. Blake's glimpsed utopiancities will be related to the Christian concept of the 'City of God', and his alienated urban spaces to the idea ofthe city as a series of material and economic processes. This new approach to Blake ties into recentscholarship (e.g. Myrone) which locates the birth of the modern artist in early eighteenth-century London, andputs Blake's work into dialogue with Marxist critics Lefebvre and de Certeau for the first time. Its focus on printculture also takes Blake's relationship with his environment in fresh directions, exploring how his works fits intocontemporary attempts to process and visualise the sprawling city.