Modernizing Blake

This essay analyzes what things separated William Blake from other Romantics, which caused him to be of great interest to his Modernist audience. He had many idiosyncratic qualities which separated him from traditional Romantics and these idiosyncrasies made him an important figure for the Modernists. His character, writing, and art are used to understand his differences from the Romantics and to see his similarities to the Modernists. This essay shows that his idiosyncrasies have caused him to be a pinnacle figure for many of the major Modernist writers and as a result he has become a key figure to the Modernists. In a sense, you can't read Modernist literature and not have a simple understanding of Blake.