Introduction

Summary

The English poet William Blake provides one of the keenest allegorical descriptions of tyranny. Urizen embodies reason and law using architects’ tools and nets to entrap society in webs of law and convention.¹ Urizen believes himself holy and writes the law. The book of brass, brass being the metal of tyranny, forces peace through single rule.² Urizen is also the creator of wrath and justice. Urizen binds people utilising law and convention to stultify imagination and rebellion. Orc, in contrast, embodies rebellion, revolution, passion and freedom, the very opposite of Urizen’s tyrannical god. But the two are intertwined.³ Urizen uses law to enforce reason, peace and oppression which Orc rebels against with creativity and revolution, but Orc also demonstrates a potential to descend into tyranny if Urizen’s tyrannical tools are not entirely discarded once he is overthrown.⁴ Blake’s complicated mythology mirrors tyranny’s complexity. Tyranny uses law and reason to establish that absolutism is necessary for peace. Tyrannicide recognises the necessity of rebellion, the false restraint of both rule by law and fear of anarchy, but, as such, tyrannicide is only legitimate if it does not replicate the tyranny it seeks to overthrow.