Rage, Embodiment, and Withdrawal: Trans Impossibilities in William Blake’s The [First] Book of Urizen

Abstract: Although William Blake’s Urizen is often defined by his tyranny and rigidity, I suggest that Urizen in The Book of Urizen also signals a site of bodily struggle and self-acceptance that has been underread in the context of trans literary history. The text’s central scene of embodiment and the affective states surrounding it invite further examination into how this poem renders a trans-Romantic archive legible. Through a close reading of the poem that builds on scholarship by Saree Makdisi, Kate Singer, and Hil Malatino, I place Urizen within the lineage of early Romantic writing grappling with possibilities of bodily transformation.