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William Blake Research Paper

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Poet, painter and print maker, William Blake (1757-1827) is one of the greatest figures in the history of English literature. Thanks to his unique and revolutionary poetry, Blake is often considered to be the earliest of the Romantics, and “was a lyric poet interested chiefly in ideas”(Kazin,3). In his renowned poems The Tyger and The Lamb, Blake’s main focus is the realities of the spiritual world. My aim in this paper is to compare and contrast these two important poems by focusing on their themes, styles and tones.

According to The Cambridge Companion to William Blake, The Tyger is the most anthologized poem in English literature. With its complex symbolism and poetic power, it is also considered to be the most widely read
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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.

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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

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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.

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In the past, both British and American authors published numerous of great poems, plays, sonnets, and novels that have influences our lives many different ways. Those authors’ writing styles changed due to different period of time. Romantic Era, from 1800 and 1850, was the period that authors mainly concentrating on Industrial Revolution, Age of Enlightenment, and nature. One of the Romantic poets, William Blake, was a remarkable poet who impacted countless writers not only during Victorian literature, but also others through ages. Each of William Blake’s works expressed different information about the Romantic Era, which most of his works have the themes of imagination, nature, and emotions.

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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.

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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.

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Web. 23 Feb. 2015. Greenblatt, Stephen, Ed. William Blake. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th eds, Vol.

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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.

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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

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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.

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The poems found inside the book explore the innocence of children. Even though at first hand these poems have the quality of a children’s book they have a darker meaning. Beneath their words and images, these troubling and argumentative songs reflect Blake’s spiritual experiences and political beliefs. His work touches some delicate subjects such as religion, child abuse, the church, poverty, and the rights of children. For example, in his poem, “The Human Abstract,” from his collection Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake offers a further examination of the four virtues that constituted God and Man: mercy, pity, peace, and love.

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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.”

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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.

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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

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