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Articles

Vol. 54 no. 3: Winter 2020–21

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

  • Kang-Po Chen
DOI
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.276
Submitted
16 January 2021
Published
16 Jan. 2021

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.