Monday, October 10, 2011

Voice, Titles, and Parody in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Blake includes numerous speakers in the poem in a way that parallels and departs from biblical structure. There are distinct narrators in The Argument and in the Devil’s “memorable fancies”, and from the font of the “proverbs of Hell” it seems as they may also have a separate narrator. One way that this parallels the Bible is that they both rely on the words of others to describe the sentiments and actions of a deity. However, in the poem, the Devil is given voice directly, whereas in the Bible he and God generally speak within the quotations of some other narrator. It is also interesting to note that the voice of God is not present in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and the Prophets and angels speak through narrators. In this way, the Devil is given priority in a reversal of the Bible. This is one way that Blake uses form to satirize interpretations of Christianity.

The titles of different sections of the poem also show an interesting take on biblical structure. The poem is broken up into several sections—The Argument, The voice of the Devil and his Memorable Fancies, the Proverbs of Hell, Enough and Too Much, and Opposition is true Friendship. The clearest allusion to Biblical style in this group of titles is to the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, which has a similar structure to that of the Proverbs of Hell, but are intended to be an inversion of Christian principles. The Memorable Fancy sections also seem to parody the Bible—by giving these parables a whimsical title, Blake pokes fun at the solemn tone that the Bible takes. He breaks up these Memorable Fancies with Enough! or Too Much and Opposition is true Friendship, two relatively serious titles. By burying serious statements amid humorous ones, Blake delivers a more surprising, and more effective, punch with his arguments. Perhaps this is also a statement on Biblical structure—namely, that the Bible would be more effective if it weren’t so dry or so serious.

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