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| Position of feet most always means something. Right foot or left foot forward and visible is meaningful: right and left on the same plate can suggest mirror images | Plate 2, God and Job are counterparts here, two sides of one being. |
| Right and left foot and hand mean either spiritual (right) and temporal (left) or correct (right) and erroneous (left) or both of these contraries in combination. | Plate 4, The three messengers are visible (the third barely so); the first two bring news of Job's earthly losses; the third messenger advances with his right foot. |
| Faces are often mirror images linking the upper world (usually but not always within a cloud) and the temporal: the upper image represents the individuals personal understanding of God, i.e. this is what Job, for example, thinks of his God at this moment. | Plate 9. Here Eliphaz reports his dream vision so that he appears in his own dream as both himself and his God. |
| Plates themselves can mirror one another. | Plates 1 and 21 exhibit examples of this mirroring. The animals in the margin are reversed in position as are the sun and the new moon. Does this show a change in time of day or a change in point of view? |
| Clockwise motion is present throughout suggesting diurnal motion (passage of earthly time) | Cover. Seven angels on the cover descend on the right and ascend towards the left. |
| Scrolls are spiritual texts or meanings and books are worldly, temporal or legal meanings; New Testament and Old Testament as well. Both are needed. | Plate 5. Job's God leans on a book and seems to be about to fall off his throne because he does. |
| Gothic buildings are Christian, Druidic structures are
pagan, presumably false ideas; classical are based on reason, thus
insufficient when alone. |
Plate 1. The sun rises behind a church. Or does it set behind it? |
| Marginal sketches and marginal text usually read clockwise from the top and always pertain to the central frames; Many of the citations come from Job itself, but some from the New Testament, while some are Blakean emendations of Job. | Plate 5. |
| The images move Job from a state of innocence to a state of experience, a very common motif in Blake. | Plate 12. Sleeping Job in the margin is about to awaken from his innocence. |
| To Blake, the fact that Job "eschewed evil" is a sign of innocence or error, a second common Blakean motif. | Plate 21. Job and his family no longer have their music put away in the tree. |
| God changes as the understanding of Job matures. | |
| Light and dark focus attention in unusual ways. | Plate 6. The feet of Job are illuminated on his wife's lap. She is far from her husband in space, but tends his feet. |
| Plates have opposing or contrary plates | Plates 1 and 21
Plates 2 and 16 Plates 3 and 20 Plates 4 and 19 Plates 5 and 19 Plates 6 and 14 Plates 7 and 19 Plates 8 and 18 Plates 9 and 17 Plates 10 and 18 Plates 11 and 13 Plates 12 and 15 |
| The method for reading Blake's Book of Job used here is
fashioned from Joseph Wicksteed, Blake's Vision
of the Book of Job, A Study (New York, 1910) and S. Foster Damon, Blake's Job: William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job with an introduction and commentary (Providence, Rhode Island, 1966). But full responsibility for the actual site is the designer's. |
Updated by T. Duket, October 5, 2002 |