(Northrup Frye's Bible)
We can see the same thing in the Bible or in the works of William Blake:
Creation, the Fall, the Return and the Apocalypse.
This is the myth, in fact the primary myth that pervades all English Literature.
In a large work you may find the myth repeated often.
Look for example at The Book of Job:
The beginning, the fall, the return and finally a future for Job
much like the Return to the City of God.
We find the myth clearly in the story Blake got from the Greek myth of Psyche. .
Blake painted a tempera
that graphically illustrates the basic myth:
Heaven is above; on the right are dry souls, the nymphs;
But they hanker for mortality and descend (Fall); all expect one who chooses to go back, like Thel did! They experience the Sea of Time and Space and a variety of various forms of Fallenness.
But one succeeds and finds the path back to Eternity.
But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot Die
Thro evening shades I haste away To close the Labours of my Day
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