Name: Andrea Rodriguez Class: History 117 (51364) Instructor: Dr. Cass Research Paper William Blake 5/6/2015 William Blake All drawing artist and poets have their own techniques and writing styles. William Blake's poetry contains repetition creating a sense of reinforcement and stubbornness that reflects his observations during his life. As for his art William began his technique at the age 10, he studied engraving and grew to love gothic art which he incorporated into his own unique spiritual work. William used a kind of illuminated printing that both complemented his poetry and art.
The imagery of the young child as a 'black thing', juxtaposed against white 'nature' (snow), confronts the reader of the first line. It implies the dehumanising effect (thing = object, non-human) of this form of child-labour on the once 'white', pure soul of the child, a key aspect of Romantic thought. One of the most influential poets in English history, William Blake’s works as a painter, poet and printmaker inspired a major part of the Romantics movement and the beginning of the anti-slavery campaign. His ideas made him a seminal figure of poetic and artistic movements’ way ahead of his time.
Alongside his rejection of conventional faith, Blake lived his life by the wisdom of the bible, as displayed through religious hallucinations in many of his poems, often represented through the use of angels. Despite Blake’s love for god, he dwelled against the Church of England alongside all organised religions. The quote “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” by Rousseau, relates to Blake’s notorious questionable views and his political ideas, 4 of Blake’s poems that display religious and political views are, “The Tyger”, “The Lamb” “Little Boy Lost” and “Little Boy Found” “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” by William Blake at first glance are polar opposites, the Tyger represents experience, where the young Lamb represents innocence, however, when you dig deeper there are many similarities through metaphors linked to religion and god himself, between the two. Blake felt that both creatures reflected human history and thought. Blake, having a strong belief in the Christian God, the Tyger represents an image, the
William Blake has showed the audience through his poems, that he believes in innocence and the body of God itself, and all of God’s creations. One of the few examples are, “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and “The Chimney Sweeper.” The poem, “The Chimney Sweeper,” was narrated by one of the children that worked as a chimney sweeper. In the beginning of the poem, the child gives us an introduction of his early life on how his mother died when he was younger, and that his father sold him. The name of the child is Tom Dacre.
The inspirations for Blake’s work come from the political changes taking place during his life. He writes about the French revolution and its relation to the relationship between the churches the state and the people. How it would affect men’s views of the church. He also wrote about the tyranny of kings. These unsettling situations helped lead Blake to write the great works of his time.
William Blake was considered to be a rebel because of the techniques he used in his time period. William used many different, yet similar themes throughout his poems. These two poems differ in many ways; however, they speak of the same conflict. “The Chimney Sweeper” speaks out about the cruelness of child labor. Both the poems highlight the boys’ feelings over working in the chimneys.
Romanticism, which is an artistic and philosophical movement that evolved in the early 18th and 19th centuries, represents a radical shift in British ideology and societal views. Romanticism can be seen as a rebellion against the traditional Neoclassical views of the time, which held order, rationality, and restraint as the highest virtues. Instead, Romanticism focused emotion, nature, and social justice (Shuttleworth). While Romanticism can be characterized by a variety of features and common ideas, one underlying theme is the fascination with the natural world and how society places limitations on human beings. Because children have less time to be tainted by the demands of society, they are often regarded by Romantics as being closest to nature and thus playing a vital role in the world.
The untraditional and rebellious thinking of the boy in the second poem also shows organized religion's predicted harsh reaction. Religion in this setting destroys the boy for trying to reach outside of the accepted normal teachings, this shows the repression of imagination in children which is the down fall in adults. On a whole the poems show progression in Blake's dissatisfaction with organized religion to an bold display of its
William Blake was a romantic in both poetry and visual art; his poems were almost always accompanied by images that Blake himself made, emphasizing his passion for the arts. Blake’s works were put together in collections such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (1794). The main focus of Blake’s poems was the exploration of contraries. No two poems illustrate this nature of the contradictory as well as “The Tyger” and “The Lamb” where Blake utilizes structure and theme, among other literary devices, to demonstrate the duality of the human soul.
One poetic technique that Blake uses is a simile when he compares Tom Dacre’s hair to a lambs back. In this simile, he is saying the child is innocent because the lamb is a symbol of innocence. He uses a metaphor in line twelve of the first poem when he said, “all of them were locked up in coffins of black.” The meaning of this is that since they were forced to sweep out chimneys, it was like them literally being locked in coffins of black with the chimney being the coffin and the black being the soot. An alliteration happens in the first two lines of the first poem with “young” and “tongue.”
Literary Response to William Blake’s The Lamb Poetry is a bittersweet form of literature because as beautiful as it is to read aloud, it’s just as difficult to analyze and interpret its meanings. William Blake uses his rhythmic poem, The Lamb, to portray the innocence of the lamb and how it relates to the innocence of a child, both of which are God’s creations. William Blake throws his audience deep into the motifs of his poem with the first two lines of his poem:
William Blake (1757-1827), a now highly regarded artist from the romantic age, was a very practiced, accomplished poet and visual artist. In his time he was largely misunderstood and unrecognized for his work (Willam Blake). Blake’s profoundly spiritual life’s work, both visual and written, intertwine and exist, in many cases, as one entity. Blake was strongly spiritually influenced as a youngster, which would go on to shape his work over his entire life.
The Romantic period is a period that originated in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Romantic periods peak years was between the 1800s’ and the 1850s. “Romanticism, typically defined by its opposition to classicism, favors the imagination, feelings, and intuition.” (“Romanticism”) . “ For the Romantic writer, the individual soul or imagination was paramount; at times, the heroic aspect was illustrated by a character’s stand against a community that censured the individual…” (“Romanticism”) .
Emma Lynch Mrs. Oliveros British Literature H February 1, 2016 Once Innocent, Now Exposed Influential English poet, William Blake, wrote during the Romantic era, and coined and integrated the term contrary states into his works. Blake’s two most popular works Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience express his profound concern, in which he labels “the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.” Blake’s term, contrary states, refers to the differing conditions of the human soul. His poems express this thought as the first describes the naïve side of the human soul, and the second describes the knowledgeable state. Blake effectively depicts “the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul” in his poems, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, by
Danielle Rose English 192 Prof. J Perl William Blake Like so many before and after him, Blake falls into the category of artists whose creative genius went unaddressed in their own lifetime. It was only after his death that the broad scope of his literary and artistic aptitude was acknowledged. But his scathing social critiques and insights into the nature of the human psyche are made no less relevant by their time spent in obscurity. Chronological analysis of a set of Blake poems, “The Lamb”, “The Tyger” and “Jerusalem” reveal the deeply relevant insights that Blake failed to impress upon the people of his own time.
