The Reader’s Struggle

Intellectual War in The Four Zoas

Abstract

After the Apocalypse at the end of The Four Zoas, the state of the redeemed
world is surprisingly described as intellectual war. I argue that intellectual war
is the struggle of an individual with his or her spectre, and specifically the postapocalyptic intellectual war alluded to in the last lines of the epic is the creative
struggle to form works of art that the reading of the poem will engender in an
ideal reader.