Falling Ill: The [First] Book of Urizen and Romantic Medical Theory

Abstract

This essay comes out of a fourth-year seminar on the circulation of ideas between literature and medicine in the Romantic period.  As Caira Clark shows in her essay, Blake (a visual artist trained in anatomy) draws on medical theories of the day as well as longdominant Galenic medicine to pursue a complex examination of spiritual, political, and bodily health.  The Book of Urizen is also the body of Urizen, and Urizen is also a mythical principle, as Blake links text, divinity, and corporeality to explore repression and oppression.  In particular, Caira shows the importance of the Romantic-medical conviction that balance is critical to health, and Blake‘s interest in connecting that medical framework to Christian notions of embodiment as Fall. . –Dr. Julia Wright