William Blake in popular culture

Blake's painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun (1806-1809) and the poem "Auguries of Innocence" both play a prominent role in Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon (1981), in which the killer Francis Dolarhyde has an obsession with the painting. Dolarhyde imagines himself 'becoming' a being like the Red Dragon featured in the paintings. In Hannibal, a copy of Blake's painting The Ancient of Days is owned by Mason Verger, a reference to Verger's Urizenic qualities.[4]

The cover of Thomas Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon.

Blake's epic Milton a Poem was adapted by J. G. Ballard in his 1979 novel, The Unlimited Dream Company.[5]

Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988) contains a brief episode in which the characters discuss Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell.[6]

Blake is described by Philip Pullman as one of three major literary influences on His Dark Materials, along with Heinrich von Kleist and John Milton.[7] Pullman's stated intention was to invert Milton's story of a war between heaven and hell in the light of Blake's famous comment that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it".[8] Pullman stated that he "is of the Devil's party and does know it."

Blake is a character in Tracy Chevalier's novel Burning Bright (2007), which centres on a family who live next door to him in Lambeth while he is writing Songs of Experience.[9]

In Orson Scott Card's series The Tales of Alvin Maker, William Blake was depicted under the name "Taleswapper". [10]

In Crawford Kilian's novel The Fall of the Republic, when a gateway is found to a parallel world equivalent to 18th-century Earth, it is named Beulah, and other worlds at different points in the timestream are named for other Blake entities, such as Orc, Ahania, Los, Urthona, Thel, and Tharmas. In particular, a future world whose atmosphere has been devastated by unknown forces is called Ulro.[11]

Science Fiction writer Ray Nelson's 1975 novel "Blake's Progress" is based on the assumption that Blake was a time-traveler, possessing the ability to travel to the past or future, and that many of Blake's "visions" - sometimes conceived as indications of his "madness" - were actual, concrete things he had seen in these past and future times that he visited.

The 2017 Robert Langdon series' best selling mystery-thriller novel Origin, written by American author Dan Brown, incorporates text from the Blake poem Vala, or The Four Zoas as a prominent plot point of the story.

Blake was particularly influential on the young generation of early twentieth-century English landscape painters, such as Paul Nash and Dora Carrington. Abstract painter Ronnie Landfield dedicated a painting to Blake in the late 1960s.[12]

Blake is often cited as an inspiration in comic literature. Alan Moore cites Blake's work in V for Vendetta (1982-1985) and Watchmen (1986–87).[13] As an apparent homage to Blake's importance in Moore's work, a framed copy of Blake's watercolor Elohim Creating Adam can be seen when Evey first explores V's hideout in the film version of V for Vendetta. William Blake also becomes an important figure in Moore's later work, and is a featured character in From Hell (1991–1998) and Angel Passage (2001). In From Hell, Blake appears as a mystical and occultic foil to William Gull's aristocratic plot to murder the prostitutes of Whitechapel in London. Gull appears to Blake in two visions over the course of Moore's comic, and becomes the inspiration for The Ghost of a Flea. Angel Passage was performed at the 2001 Tate Gallery exhibition of Blake accompanied with art by John Coulthart.

Grant Morrison, R. Crumb, and J. M. DeMatteis have all cited Blake as one of their major inspirations. Comic designer William Blake Everett claims to be descended from Blake.[14][15]

Francis Dolarhyde as portrayed by Tom Noonan in the film Manhunter, wearing a tattoo based on one of Blake's Red Dragon paintings

In his film Mean Streets (1973), Martin Scorsese refers to Blake's poem "The Tyger" when a young pet tiger makes Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro take refuge atop a couch, paralleling the grit and innocence of life in the city.[16]

A variation on a verse from Blake's America a Prophecy appears in Ridley Scott's science fiction film Blade Runner (1982), spoken by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). This has been interpreted as a way of linking Batty to Blake's mythic regenerative hero Orc.[17]

In Jim Jarmusch's 1995 western Dead Man, the central character, played by Johnny Depp, is named William Blake and allusions to Blake's poetry appear thematically as well as explicitly. An American Indian called Nobody saves Blake's life, and actually thinks that the person is, in fact, Blake the poet.[18]

Blake or his work has also featured in other American independent films since 2000. Hal Hartley’s The New Math(s) (2000), in which two students fight with their teacher over the solution to a complex mathematical equation, takes as its inspiration Blake’s The Book of Thel. Similarly, Gus Van Sant’s Last Days (2005), which is loosely based on the final hours of Kurt Cobain, has a central character called Blake. The Blakean allusions are subtle throughout the film and include Hildegard Westerkamp’s "Doors of Perception" soundscape, itself a response to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. At the end of the film, having committed suicide, Blake’s soul ascends from his body in a scene that directly references the illustrations to Robert Blair's The Grave, which was illustrated by Blake in 1808.[19]

The film versions of the novel Red Dragon, Manhunter (1986) and Red Dragon (2002), include images of Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun. In the first film the character played by Tom Noonan sports a tattoo on his chest based on Blake's image of the dragon hovering over the woman. The second film has the character (played by Ralph Fiennes) display a stylised version of the dragon tattooed on his back.[20]

The film The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2002) features Blake's works prominently. Tim Sullivan (Kieran Culkin) argues with Sister Assumpta (Jodie Foster) regarding The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which Assumpta destroys and says that Blake was a "very dangerous thinker." Later in the film, Francis Doyle (Emile Hirsch) reads Blake's The Tyger at Sullivan's funeral as a eulogy.

The image of V escaping the fire at Larkhill in The Wachowskis' V for Vendetta (2006) is very similar to Blake's images of Orc from the Illuminated Works (cf. Urizen plate 16; America plate 12), and an almost exact reproduction of plate 5 (V, had Blake used Roman numerals to number his plates) of "The Gates of Paradise," titled "Fire."[21]

Jack Shepherd's stage play In Lambeth dramatised a visit by Thomas Paine to the Lambeth Home of William and Catherine Blake in 1789. The play was later adapted for television in the BBC Two Encounters series, first broadcast on 4 July 1993.[22][23]

Assets for the game Dante's Inferno draw upon Blake's illustrations to Dante as well as those by Gustave Doré and Auguste Rodin.[36]

The character V from Devil May Cry 5 often quotes poetry by William Blake, namely the opening stanza of Auguries of Innocence being read out loud by the character, and reference to The Tyger seen within his poetry book. Furthermore, the game’s primary antagonist, “Urizen, ‘the Demon King’”, a godlike being embodying absolute power divorced from all conscience and humanity, is clearly inspired by Blake’s mythological “Urizen”. The plot contains elements which parallel much of Blake’s philosophy and writings, most explicitly seen in the half-human, half-demon protagonist, Dante, and his struggle to maintain a balanced wholeness of persona despite his intrinsically dualistic nature, obvious similar to Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, et al.