by Christopher Moon-Little

Created on: March 25, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

A rough guide to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Introduction

Basically Marriage of Heaven and Hell [MHH] is a satirical work which expresses many of the ideas of Romanticism. Here Blake is both insightful ironic. His humour is hardly American pie but it is kind of funny in it's own right. How I will do this is refer to lines in the plate for example Plate 3 line 4. I will try and give you all the detail I can think of and be bothered to write.

Quick an overview of the Enlightenment versus Romanticism. The Enlightenment is also known as 'The Age of Reason' which is what it basically was, reason was the top of fashion, one was overcoming desire and emotions, which Blake calls energies, and governing themselves with reason, the colder or less 'human' the better in many cases. This was a booming period for philosophers who are in love with reason and wisdom, (Philosopher means lover of wisdom). One particular philosopher who might be a good example of the type of thought I mean is a German genius called Immanuel Kant. Came believe that morality lay in discovering ones duty, not by some higher authority like God, but through ones reason, he believed humans were autonomous, which means self governing. He believed ones duty could be found by acting along certain rules which the actor would consider should apply to everyone in the universe, they were universal laws or maxims. An example of these would be, 'do not steal' for you can't wish stealing to be universal' or 'do not kill' and even 'do not lie'. Now to the point. Kant gives an example of how fervently one must stick to ones duties and not incorporate emotion into morality. He gave a scenario where you friend rushes up to you in the street saying that someone was chasing him and would certainly kill him if he was found. You then see you friend run off and hide in a dead end alley. The murderer comes and asks where the man he was chasing went. Now it is your duty not to lie but is it not also your duty to protect your friend? No, you must not lie no matter what and leave the murder to break such a duty as non violence. Also you cannot universalize protecting your friends, what if the police were after them for murder? You cannot universalize that criminals should be helped to escape.

So it was this mentality that Blake was attacking. He says that one needs opposites to exist together for a complete human experience or life. Emotion has to come into the mix we are human after all.

The Enlightenment was an age

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