William Blake's The marriage of heaven and hell : a formal analysis

Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell holds a central position in the body of his works; his essential concept of contrariety, expressed here for the first time, appears over and over in his later poetry and prophetic books. My thesis focuses on the form of the Marriage as it relates to this major theme. In the Marriage Blake makes a very definite statement about the "whole" man. It centers around the existence of contraries, antithetical beings or states of mind which on earth seek to destroy each other. Opposed to these earthly contraries Blake pictures the ideal, a state in which contraries exist together complementing and perfecting each other. Christ is the one example of the ideal; Blake feels, however, that it is not only possible for all men to achieve such perfection, but necessary if the earth is ever to be free from the cycle of suppression and revolt