Cogan, Lucy
(2021)
Rending the “Soft Plains” of America: Rape and Liberation in the Poetry of William Blake.
European Romantic Review, 32 (4).
pp. 377-397.
ISSN 1050-9585
Abstract
William Blake is often popularly recalled as a proponent of “free
love” who equated unrestrained desire with the push for
universal liberty, yet much of the sex that appears in his work is
non-consensual and violent, the product of a masculine urge for
sexual self-actualization. This apparent contradiction has
confounded critics for decades, particularly since feminist theory
transformed the discourse on rape in the mid-twentieth century.
As this article will argue, however, the representations of sexual
assault in Blake’s work are neither an endorsement nor an
evasion of the gendered dynamics of forced sex, but are instead
evidence of his efforts to work through his own uncertainty
regarding what limits, if any, the drive for personal liberty should
observe. In his interrogation of this question, Blake takes an
approach that is analogous to the methodology of hermeneutics,
repeatedly revisiting instances in his mythopoeia in which liberty
and sexual assault collide in order to confront the contradictions
inherent in his conception of emancipation. Working through
these versions, Blake uncovers the imperialist, colonialist logic
that underpins any quest for individual liberation that refuses to
acknowledge its victims.
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