AN UNNOTICED ALLUSION BY WILLIAM BLAKE TO GNOSTIC LITERATURE.

A literary criticism of the poem "Jerusalem" by William Blake is presented. It explores an allusion to gnostic literature in one of Blake's plate emblems, comparing Blake's use of the Beast, Leviathan, and Behemoth images to similar ones in gnostic cosmology. It discusses Blake's images of the manipulation of night by the bestial Specter and the Divine Vision of the heavens in relation to gnostic cosmological hierarchies. Blake's description of Tartarus, Gehenna, and Bath, England are mentioned.