The New Jerusalem? The Impact of Industrialisation

Abstract

In the Preface to Milton, now more familiarly known as Jerusalem, Blake expressed the hope that Jerusalem could be built in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. Despite the emergence of an urban context rather than a pastoral one, technological advances appeared to produce a society nearer to that vision. For other critics, however, the dream had become a nightmare of exploitation and expropriation.

I will not cease from Mental Fight

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land

Preface to Milton by William Blake