SOURCE: "Contrary Revelation: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," in Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 24, No. 4, Winter, 1985, pp. 491-509.

In this essay, Miller questions the critical assessment of The Marriage as a revolutionary document, suggesting instead that it is far more paradoxical than the usual manifesto.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell holds a special place in the Blake canon. It marks the transition from the early works, in which Blake's poetic vision is articulated primarily in single lyrics or groups of lyrics, to the prophecies, where that vision assumes narrative and systematic form. A convenient point of entry to the later works, this text frequently serves critics as the programmatic statement of Blake's prophetic method and doctrine. According to Harold Bloom, the book represents Blake's visionary coming of age: "in this greatest of his polemical works he enters fully into the kingdom of his own thought and art...