Violence, Death, and Autoeroticism: The Alternative Self-Annihilation in Visions of the Daughters of Albion

Abstract

I argue … that aside from being a central factor in Blake’s revisionist Christian system of the “human form divine,” self-annihilation is a major source of eroticism in his portrayal of unconventional sexual experiences. Self-annihilation as an erotic phenomenon is empowered by the violent alteration of human subjectivity and the dissolution of social and biological preexisting identity. Blake’s designs of Oothoon and Theotormon in Visions exemplify this alternative aspect, as this essay attempts to demonstrate.