Job rebuked by his friends

The Romantic movement in eighteenth-century Western Europe was fascinated with ideas about intuition, emotion and mysticism, favouring subjective responses over the rational mind. Blake's The Book of Job draws on such interpretations of meaning alongside current debates over the Sublime, which reworked its original meaning as 'supreme beauty' into a new dynamic and powerful force, divinely inspired. The rhythmic composition of the accusers' outstretched arms has the repetitive effect of a Greek chorus and is extraordinarily expressive. (Monsters and Maidens, 2004)

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