Abstract

In Collected Poems (1999), labor historian and literary analyst E. P. Thompson, building on the work of his mentor William Blake, critiques the "abstraction" (expropriative alienation) of labor and cultural capital. "In Praise of Hangmen" is Thompson's rethinking of Blake's "The Human Abstract," exposing the use of determinist rationales to twist the concept of "mercy" into a defense of capital punishment. In "Formula and Product" Thompson rewrites Blake's treatment of factories as prisons of desire or "dark Satanic mills." Building on Blake's "The Everlasting Gospel" and Jerusalem, Thompson in "Annunciation" and "Lullaby" protests the devaluation of women's sexuality and childrearing labor by a patriarchal ethic of purity. And in Powers and Names, Thompson uses Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell to critique the base-superstructure metaphor in contexts of Chinese politics. A range of Thompson's prose analyses clarifies the verse critiques.