Witness against the beast : William Blake and the moral law

"Witness Against the Beast is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study in which the renowned social historian E.P. Thompson contends that most of the assumptions scholars have made about William Blake are misleading and unfounded. Brilliantly reexamining Blake's cultural milieu and intellectual background, Thompson detects in Blake's poetry a repeated call to resist the usury and commercialism of the 'Antichrist' embodied by contemporary society--to 'witness against the beast'."--Back cover Thompson contends that most of the assumptions made about William Blake, the thinker and poet, are misleading and unfounded. The learned tradition that later adopted Blake as a canonical author was important only as the tradition against which he worked. In this verse, John Bunyan sought to enforce the lesson of Christian's first severe temptation in Pilgrim's Progress.