William Blake

William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker, or "Author & Printer", as he signed many of his books. He is now widely recognised as a genius of English letters, and one of the foremost (arguably the foremost) visionary artists of the modern age; it is now fashionable in certain circles to criticise his art as simplistic. It is fair to state that Blake's visual art, if only for being so closely wedded to his verse, will outlive such criticism.

Works inspired by Blake

• Tyger, an album by electronic music artists Tangerine Dream, features a number of William Blake poems set to music.
• Tiger (ca. 1928), a tone-cluster piano piece by Henry Cowell
• Red Dragon, a novel by Thomas Harris, whose title refers to Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, the original of which is eaten by the novel's antihero.
• The 1981 film The Evil Dead, directed by Sam Raimi, also contains Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, this time as a page in the Book of the Dead.
• Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an album by the Norwegian musical group Ulver from 1998, utilizes the complete text of the Blake poem lyrically.
• The Songs of Innocence and Experience have been set to music by Ralph Vaughan-Williams, and more recently by William Bolcom. Albums using them as lyrics include Greg Brown's "Songs of Innocence and Experience" and Jah Wobble's "The Inspiration of William Blake". Allen Ginsberg also released an album of Blake songs.
• A series of poems and texts chosen by Peter Pears from Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, Auguries of Innocence, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was made into the song cycle, Songs and Proverbs of William Blake, by Benjamin Britten in 1965.
• The Sick Rose from Songs of Experience is one of the poems by several authors set to music by Benjamin Britten in Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.
• Spring, by Finn Coren
• The World of Tiers books by Philip José Farmer
• Quotations from Blake form the climax of Jerry Springer - The Opera
• Dead Man, a film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, features a character named William Blake and includes many references to Blake's work.
• Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!, a novel by Kenzaburo Oe
• Love's Secret Domain, an electronic album by Coil, quotes Blake numerous times in the lyrics. The title track is also a reinterpretation of The Sick Rose. Various other albums by Coil carry many Blake references and allusions.
• The book The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley draws its title from a line in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The title of Huxley's book, in turn, inspired the naming of the rock band The Doors who turned Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"(106-108) into their "End of the Night".
• The Amber Spyglass, the third book from the collection His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman, has several quotations from Blake's works.
• The Chemical Wedding album by Bruce Dickinson.
• Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, album by David Axelrod
• The character Blake Williams in the Schrödinger's Cat trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson is named after William Blake.
• William Blake is the secondary identity of the character Taleswapper in the Tales of Alvin Maker fantasy book series by Orson Scott Card.