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| Blake's Albion |
An essay by Dr David Fallon has been published in Home and Nation in British Literature from the English to the French Revolutions, a Cambridge University Press collection edited by A.D. Cousins and Geoffrey Payne. In 'Homelands: Blake, Albion, and the French Revolution', David shows the significance in Blake's writing of the Enlightenment
discourse of national manners and the emerging notions of nationalism and the
militarised nation-state that arose during the British wars with revolutionary
France. Blake's poetry reveals a complex relationship to nationalism as he
attempts to articulate a form of distinctly British patriotism without endorsing
the 'official' martial British nationalism of the time. He argues that Blake, like
a number of radical contemporaries, regarded the violence of the French
Revolution and the aggressive response of Britain arising from deeply engrained
national cultures.
