Recommendations
Books Like Jerusalem
Best books to read after Jerusalem by William Blake
Readers who have engaged with Blake's most ambitious prophetic epic will find companion works in the guides to his mythology, in the visionary tradition he draws on, and in the great epics that Jerusalem is in dialogue with.
- 1Buy
Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake
by Northrop Frye
The essential guide to Blake's entire mythological system — Frye's systematic account of the Zoas, the Emanations, Los, Albion, and the prophetic books is the single most important scholarly work on Blake; reading Fearful Symmetry before or alongside Jerusalem is the difference between bewilderment and understanding.
- 2Buy
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
by William Blake
The essential entry point to the mythology that Jerusalem develops — The Marriage is where the theological and philosophical principles (Energy vs. Reason, Imagination vs. the fallen world) are first stated in aphoristic form; if you read Jerusalem before The Marriage, go back and read it now to see where the mythology began.
- 3Buy
Milton: A Poem in Two Books
by William Blake
The prophetic book that immediately precedes Jerusalem — Blake's poem about Milton descending from eternity to correct his errors; understanding Milton clarifies the mythology that Jerusalem develops and shows the progression of Blake's thought from the Marriage through Milton to Jerusalem.
- 4Buy
Paradise Lost
by John Milton
The epic that underlies all of Blake's prophetic books — Blake identified with Milton as the English poet who challenged religious orthodoxy while also believing Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it'; Jerusalem is in part a correction of Milton that completes what Paradise Lost failed to accomplish.
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Songs of Innocence and of Experience
by William Blake
The lyric complement to Jerusalem's prophetic epic — the Songs show the same conflict between imaginative freedom and repressive law in brief, compressed lyric form; reading both shows the full range of Blake's formal ambition and the unity of his vision from the lyrics to the 100-plate epics.
- 6Buy
The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri (trans. Mark Musa)
The medieval epic that Jerusalem is in dialogue with — Blake illustrated the Comedy in the last years of his life and saw Dante as one of the great visionary artists, though he also believed Dante wrong about almost everything; understanding the Comedy illuminates the visionary tradition within which Jerusalem places itself.
- 7Buy
William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books
by William Blake (ed. David Bindman)
The comprehensive facsimile edition of all Blake's illuminated books including Jerusalem — the illuminations are integral to the text and cannot be separated from it; this edition is the closest readers can get to the original experience of Blake's art without visiting a special collection.
- 8Buy
Harold Bloom on Poetry
by Harold Bloom
The literary critic who most deeply engaged with Blake's prophetic books — Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and his Blake's Apocalypse use Jerusalem as a central example; reading Bloom alongside Blake provides both a guide to the mythology and a theory of why Jerusalem matters to later literary history.
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