1. What identifiable references to figures and events in the American Revolution can you find in Blake’s poem? Does Blake represent these in historically accurate terms?
2. If America is in fact a "historical" poem, why does Blake call it America: A Prophecy? What does he mean by "prophecy" here?
3. Find some definitions of "prophecy." Which, if any, of these definitions most nearly applies to Blake’s poem? Does your research into the meaning of "prophecy" help you in any way better to understand Blake’s poem?
4. Who is Albion’s Angel? Who is Orc? How do you know?
5. Does any of the action or the language in America sound familiar? Have you encountered any of this elsewhere, in any source which Blake might possibly have known about in 1793?
6. The American war ended in 1781, with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. By 1793 there were entirely “new fish to fry,” as the fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 should indicate. Why, then, would Blake choose to compose and publish in 1793 a poem on so out-of-date a subject as the American Revolution?
7. What is the purpose of the “Preludium”? What is it “about”? What does it “mean”? What is its relationship to the rest of the poem? An you find any definition of “preludium” that helps you answer these questions?
8. What is the function of the illuminations (i. e., the visual materials)? Do they contribute to the work? If so, what do they contribute? Do they detract from the work? If so, how do they do so? Do they simply confuse matters for a reader? If so, how, and why would Blake wish to play such a dirty trick on us?
9. In what way (or ways) could you say that America: A Prophecy is a Romantic work? In what way (or ways) might we say it is a “revolutionary” work?
10. In later 18th-century England there was a definable tradition of millenarianism which centered in figures like Richard Brothers and, later, Joanna Southcott, and which found many supporters in the artisan classes and the urban middle class. What influence might millenarianism be said to exert upon America: A Prophecy?