The accepted periodization of English literary history, a linear alternation of convention and revolt, has made Blake the ancestral and archetypal romantic. But an examination of the language of his texts, using Michel Foucault's archaeological method, demonstrates the classical structure of his oeuvre, which is a variant of classical discourse as defined and described by Foucault. The deep structure of Blake's discourse is logical, but the logic is not that of general grammar; it is the logic of identity, not the logic of difference. The assimilation of Blake's oeuvre into Foucault's classical episteme enriches and expands Foucault's model of the period; it also offers a model of the transformation from classical to modern that may clarify some of the difficulties of Foucault's scheme of historical change.
