SOURCE: Easson, Roger R. “William Blake and His Reader in Jerusalem.” In Blake's Sublime Allegory, edited by Stuart Curran and Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr., pp. 309-27. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.

In the following essay, Easson examines Blake's understanding of the reader-writer relationship and his invitation in Jerusalem to readers to be participants in the creative process.

Repeatedly, in his correspondence, in his marginalia, and in his poetry, William Blake expresses an abiding concern with his audience; and that concern becomes more evident as Blake's disenchantment with his audience—especially with his patrons—becomes more pronounced. Blake's patrons expected from him an art of clarity but received an art of obscurity; Blake expected from his patrons spiritual friendship but received instead only corporeal friendship. This was unsettling to a poet who believed that “‘He who is Not With Me is Against Me.’” “There is no Medium or Middle...