Building up Jerusalem in the Classroom: William Blake and Writing Pedagogy

Abstract

William Blake’s poetry seeks to inspire readers to participate in the construction of an intellectual community that he calls “Jerusalem.” This article examines the strategies that Blake advocates in his long poems for fostering such a community, and it illustrates the utility of such approaches in the classroom. Closely reading passages from Blake’s epics, the article locates three pedagogical techniques that work especially well in writing and literature classes: guiding students in increasing the specificity of their thinking, modeling for them effective habits that they can adopt in their writing, and prompting students to escape their own subjective vantage point in order to engage in a dynamic exchange of ideas with others. Drawing on the author’s experience, the article explores the ways in which these approaches can be implemented. Such methods include assigning creative writing exercises, helping students refine generalities in their essays, using the very structure of classes to model effective thinking and writing, and facilitating one-on-one discussions between students based on the “minute particulars” of their research papers. Ultimately, the article suggests that aiding students to “converse together” as an intellectual community encourages the development of virtues that are vital to bringing Blake’s vision of a cooperative utopia increasingly into reality.