Blake and the Failure of Prophecy

Lucy Cogan is Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research is focused on the intersection of gender, politics and religion in the writing of the Long Eighteenth Century. She has published a range of articles on William Blake and women’s writing in the period.

• 1 Introduction: Prophetic Failure.- 2 Calling All Prophets.- 3 Prophetic Action.- 4 The Origins of Loss.- 5 Delusive Visions.- 6 Prophet of Eternity.- 7 Conclusion.

“Blake is commonly described as a writer of prophecies and prophetic works but, as is evident throughout Cogan's insightful and clearly argued book in many cases critics fail to be clear as to what they actually mean when they invoke this label. What is more, as is evident to any careful reader of Blake's works over the course of his career, his notions of what prophecy meant clearly transformed as the circumstances around him changed.” (Jason Whittaker, zoamorphosis.com, March 12, 2022)“Cogan implicitly presents the phases of Blakean prophecy within his own narrative framework of ‘creation, fall and redemption’ (190): she neatly portrays prophetic failure in Blake’s early career as being redeemed by his fourfold model. The book elegantly navigates the difficult terrain of Blakean prophecy, making Blakean theological and ideological complexities comprehensible without oversimplifying Blake or neglecting his resistance to coherence – a tremendously difficult line to walk and Cogan does so admirably well.” (Jude Mahmoud, Romanticism, Vol. 30 (1), 2024)“Blake is commonly described as a writer of prophecies and prophetic worksbut, as is evident throughout Cogan's insightful and clearly argued book, in many cases critics fail to be clearas to what they actually mean when they invoke this label.” (Jason Whittaker, zoamorphosis.com, March 12, 2022)“Cogan’s book does an exceptional job of exploring such tensions across the range of Blake’s corpus. … daring and innovative engagement with Blake’s treatment of prophecy.” (G. A. Rosso, Blake, An Illustrated Quarterly, Winter, Vol. 56 (3), 2022-2023)