In his poems Blake uses imagery and diction to contrast how children meet adversity with naive hope while adults meet adversity with delusion and denial. In the 1789 version of “Chimney Sweeper,” Blake describes the situation through the eyes of a child. He invokes sympathy from the reader by creating images of a poor young boy slaving away and sleeping in “soot” (Blake 4). To show how the boys are mistreated, Blake dehumanizes one boy by comparing him to an animal. The comparison of the boy to a “lamb” being shaved also indicates that the boy’s innocence has been violated because of the inhumanity he endures (Blake 6).
William Blake was an English illustrator, engraver, and poet. He was born in London on November 28, 1757. His family had a comfortable lifestyle, so Blake had an idyllic childhood and was educated at home by his parents. Since childhood, Blake had a vivid imagination, and he often sensed and thought differently from the rest of his peers. He had incredible talent in the arts and wrote poetry as a boy.
The Impact of William Blake on the world Once known for his peculiar and unfamiliar views, William Blake emerged to be remembered as one of the most fashionable poets of his lifetime. Although not popular amongst the general population, Blake “believed that his poetry could be read and understood by common people.” William Blake was a strong and humble writer who valued freedom, creativity and vison. The majority of his works have been associated with the “Romantic Movement”, an era that was solely based off raw and strong emotions that went into depth with the way people felt and connected with others. William Blake valued many artists in his generation but dismissed 18th century modern literary and preferred traditional artists such as Michelangelo,
The Gothic era produced many works of literature that deal with dark circumstances that cannot easily be explained. Many works, including Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, are unanimously accepted as gothic, but that is not the case for all gothic literature. William Blake is well-known as a Romantic poet; however, that is not the case for both of his poems entitled “The Chimney Sweeper.” These poems reflect many elements that are gothic, including a gloomy setting, supernatural beings, and intense emotions. These elements argue that William Blake was not solely a Romantic poet.
With the Romantic period valuing imagination and emotions, writers began to “read nature as system, of symbols”(A Guide to the Study of Literature). To Romantics every aspect of nature tells a story. In William Blake’s poetry he personifies the central animal in each poem. In his poem the “Lamb”, the lamb symbolizes innocence and childlike wonder.
In today’s world, children are often considered the most valuable and precious gifts to their parents since the first day they were born. Their presence on earth is God’s way of saying that life must go on, therefore, all children deserve to be love and nurture. Nowadays, feeding a child is simple, but teaching, shaping, and leading them into the correct, useful way of life is a much harder responsibility. During the 1800s, the period of Romanticism, where romantics poets illustrated their love of nature, their views of society and the surrounding into various form of arts such as poems and engraved begin to flourish. The name William Blake were often known as the Pre-Romantic poet in the beginning of the Romantic era, although his poems were
The loss of purity and innocence is a common theme in many art forms, including poetry; many of these pieces focus on where the protagonist begins and the simple, mundane state of the character/being (Golan par 2). Human ordeals are a central focus in many mediums of art. People are born innocent and are shaped into who they become through life experiences. There are often specific instances that represent the loss of innocence. Through the poem that is being evaluated, there are specific examples listed to represent the original, pure state of the people: beauty was stripped from a self-created dress by being torn and representation of the shoe of a baby still loosely holding on (Harjo 28-32).
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.
In the poems by “william Blake” they are both talking on the same subject matter of Chimney Sweepers and how they feel about their situation, they also both use elements of a dark and light tone in their poems but address it differently and end different from each other. The poem “ from songs of Innocence” the overall feel of the story is bittersweet. At the beginning of the poem, it starts off in a very dark place “When my mother died I was very young” and towards the middle they’re is a tone shift to a more uplifting feel “ he open’d the coffins and set them all free;” , this makes it bittersweet because they are in a dark place but yet feel hopeful for their situation. This is different from “ from Songs of Experience” because it has
Blake achieves this curtain of innocence by writing his poems in such a way that “compels the reader to reduce complex verbal associations to essential images, and consider them moment by moment, the method of the vision itself” (Bolt). However, closer analysis of the poems reveals hidden meaning and implications of the loss of innocence. The poems “The Little Boy Lost” and the “The Little Boy Found” appear consecutively and “admit with remarkable dramatic economy the inevitable division between father and son” (Dike). At first glance the poem “The Little Boy Lost” seems to be simply about a young boy who becomes separated from his
The dangers and widespread injustice of the chimney sweeping profession caught William Blake’s attention, causing him to compose two similar works titled, ‘The Chimney Sweep.’ The first belonged to the book ‘Songs of Innocence’ published in the year 1789 and the second, to ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ published just four years after; 1793. Both poems show the joys of childhood innocence as the main subject. It highlights how childhood innocence was destroyed, taken away or ruined by adults. Blake saw innocence as a joke.
This essay will discuss how William Blake represents poverty and suffering throughout his poetry in Songs of Innocence and Experience. “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence and “London” from Songs of Experience are the two poems that will be discussed in this essay. Both poems express poverty and suffering that concern with people, particularly the people who are more vulnerable in society. They also represent suffering and the hardships that are associated with it. They also reflect on what the hierarchy of England was and how it affected people, which would have also been an influenced as to why people and children were living in poverty.
For example, the same format is used in ‘Song’ when the narrator asks “Child, is thy father dead?” and the child responds with “Father is gone!”. Here, Blake leaves room for interpretation by using the constant questioning. To poets in the Romantic period, childhood daydreams and visions were the true source of adult creativity, while others believed them to be delusions. While these instances are very compelling, one of the best examples of childhood innocence occurs in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’, where the narrator says, “Because I am happy and dance and sing, they think they have done me no injury”, a perfect example of childhood innocence transitioning to experience which leaves we as
It is strongly represented in his poetry, that Blake wishes the children to have a voice and so, he enables them to be heard. This can be seen in “The Chimney Sweep (innocence)”, which I plan to discuss in this essay. “In Blake’s poetry, the child’s voice,
What is innocence? Is it just a being’s ignorance? Does it last forever, or is it just like a fragile little angel that can be easily crushed in the hands of reality? In the short story ‘The Blue Bouquet’, Octavio Paz uses foreshadowing and symbolism to illustrate that innocence is often hunted by the cruel reality of life. The visitor had an innocent mind full of philosophical opinions on the universe when he first arrived in town.
