BOOK REVIEWS 195

William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity, by Robert Rix (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2007; pp. 182. £55).

William Blake (1757–1827), engraver, artist and poet, is now of course an

internationally known figure whose reputation is that of a visionary possessed
of an almost superhuman talent. Although an obituarist regarded him as ‘one of
those ingenious persons … whose eccentricities were still more remarkable than
their professional abilities’, even in his own day this ‘religious mystic’ was lauded
as an ‘extraordinary man’ in whom ‘all the elements of greatness’ were
‘unquestionably to be found’ (G.E. Bentley, Blake Records, 2nd edition, 2004,
pp. 468, 594, 603). Understandably, the author of the book under review is keen
to correct the ‘distorted image of Blake as either an isolated genius or as a poor
madman’ through close attention to his subject’s upbringing, friendships and
intellectual milieu (p. 155). This has been a fruitful, if familiar, approach: scholars
have explored Blake’s biography and social network, locating his creative output
within traditions of printmaking and painting, mysticism and poetry, radicalism
and revolutionary activity, Protestant nonconformity and political protest. Rix’s
contexts are the cultures of ‘Radical Christianity’, and his study focuses on the
1790s—Blake’s so-called ‘early’ period, during which he produced works such as
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), The French Revolution (1791), America
(1793) and Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794).
EHR, cxxiv. 506 (Feb. 2009)
196 BOOK REVIEWS
Understanding ‘radical’ in both its modern and eighteenth-century senses—
the word signified root, origin and, by extension, fundamental qualities inherent
in the nature or essence of a person or thing—Rix’s concerns are therefore with
both socio-political ideas and primitive Christianity, particularly Blake’s visions of
freeing people from ‘religious falsehood’ by returning to the essentials of Christian
faith (p. 4). Accordingly, he begins by outlining the religious background; notably,
Moravianism (Blake’s mother, Catherine Armitage, had been a member of the
Moravian Church, which held services at their chapel in Fetter Lane, London);
Behmenism (something approaching a complete English edition of the German
mystic Jacob Boehme’s writings was published from 1764 to 1781); Joachimism (a
millenarian tradition stemming from the exegesis of the twelfth-century Calabrian
abbot, Joachim of Fiore, and his followers, concerning the division of history into
three ages and the Eternal Evangel); Enthusiasm (a derogatory term denoting an
excess of religious fervour); and Antinomianism (another term of abuse, often
used polemically, characterised as a belief that the Mosaic Law had been abrogated
or superseded for Christians). Acknowledging the work of A.L. Morton and E.P.
Thompson, who suggested a connection between Blake’s antinomianism and the
seventeenth-century ‘Ranters’, Rix is nonetheless sceptical as to whether Blake
can be located within an ‘unbroken tradition’ that stretches back to the religious
radicalism of the English Revolution. Instead, he sees parallels in Blake’s poetry
that may have come from Moravian or similar milieux, concluding noncommittally
that Blake’s antinomianism was ‘the expression of a general attitude to a number
of contemporary discourses’ (p. 46).
The heart of Rix’s book, however, concerns Blake’s ambivalent attitude
towards the Lutheran anatomist, metallurgist, exegete and mystic, Emanuel
Swedenborg, and his followers. Blake and his wife Catherine have long been
identified as signatories of the Minute Book of the separatist Swedenborgian
New Jerusalem Church at their first general conference held at Great East Cheap
on 13 April 1789. In addition, while it is impossible to establish the full extent of
Blake’s reading habits, his annotations to three of Swedenborg’s treatises survive.
Rix justifiably regards Blake’s relationship to Swedenborg as complex. Tracing
Blake’s growing frustration with Swedenborgian doctrine—particularly in The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which is convincingly interpreted as subversive
parody—he nonetheless appreciates that in later life Blake maintained a high
opinion of Swedenborg as a ‘Divine Teacher’ and visionary who had ‘corrected
many errors of Popery and also of Luther & Calvin’ (pp. 63–4). Likewise, Rix
advocates reading Blake’s work against the background of the ‘micro-culture of
radical Swedenborgians’ (p. 85), a milieu embracing apocalyptic and anti-
establishment prophecy, Freemasonry and belief in Animal Magnetism.
Appealing to ministers, former Methodists, Moravians, Quakers and Baptists,
as well as printers, painters, engravers, musicians, instrument-makers and
surgeons, among others, this environment provided a fertile climate for the
circulation and reception of texts by Boehme and his interpreters, Familists,
purported Rosicrucians, Kabbalists, alchemists, astrologers and abolitionists.
Drawing largely on printed sources, including some in Scandinavian languages,
Rix steers clear of the tenuous connections and unsubstantiated claims that have
marked some of the scholarship in this field to provide a careful and balanced
reconstruction of an important aspect of Blake’s world.
ARIEL HESSAYON
doi:10.1093/ehr/cen398 Goldsmiths, University of London
EHR, cxxiv. 506 (Feb. 2009)