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An essay on william blake
An essay on william blake
An essay on william blake
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More handpicked essays just for you.
An essay on william blake
An essay on william blake
An essay on william blake
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
There is a sense of underlying determination throughout the poems which carries into our lives, it gives us the message to work hard for what you want and it overall gives us hope for the future. There is a specific
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.
One of the poets also inspired by Blake was Iain Sinclair. He was a British writer and filmmaker. In his work he exploits the Blakean character of the Children of Albion since he focuses on the characteristics of Slayd, Hand and Kotope featured in Blake’s poem – Jerusalem which are somehow connected to the images of the Kreys, Jack the Ripper and Ratcliffe
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.
William Blake William Blake was born in London, England, 28 November 1757 and he is an English poet, British painter and Renaissance. During his life, he is not a figure of recognized and many know he is. But, this time Blake regarded as figure developed in the history of poetry and visual arts of age romanticist. When he nine years old, Blake talk he saw Allah “put his head to the window”, while walking in the countryside he saw a tree is full of Angels. His parents trying to prevent him from the “lie”, but his parents observed that he is different from his friends therefore they do not force Blake to school conventional.
His first printed work was Poetical Sketches. “Thanks to the support of Flaxman and Mrs. Mathew, a thin volume of poems was published under the title Poetical Sketches” (Poetry Foundation). This poem was six pages long and it was written to protest against the war and the way that King George III was treating the American colonies. His most known work is Songs of Innocence. Like many of Blake’s works he used watercolor paints to paint a picture around the poem.
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
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.
In both his collections, songs of innocence and experience, William Blake uses concepts and ideas of Romanticism to discuss and mirror society during the late 18th century. From his Songs of Innocence are poems written through the hopes and purity of children. These poems help draw attention to natural human understanding before corruption. Songs of Experience, however, discusses the way that adult life is demolished of its good in human understanding while also portraying similar innocence seen ‘in songs of innocence.
As a person who feels that she never gets the meaning right to poetry, reading Matthew Zapruder’s article “Understanding Poetry Is More Straightforward than You Think” helped me gain perspective. By focusing on the words, keep it simple with the words before trying to connect it to a historical meaning. This appealed to me because it’s the truth, as soon as I read the poem I try to interpret the words and look past the idea that maybe the words are just words. I’ve been taught that all poems have a deeper meaning than the surface of the words in other poetry courses. Due to this it is hard to break the habit that has been instilled.
In the poems of Songs of Experience, the speaker is a much older individual who has seen the world and all it has to offer, and this individual is shocked. Like its innocence counterpart, this series also begins with a poem called “Introduction.” This poem alludes to the Garden of Eden story in the Bible, where mankind is banished from the garden because of their desire to become godlike. This fall could also be referring to individuals on a personal level, where once one becomes aware of mortality their consequence is losing their childlike innocence forever. Although realizing events and ideas might cause one to lose their childlike innocence, Blake still advocated for the idea of breaking free from the shackles of evil the governments have on them, and following one’s happiness and desires.
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.”
Poetry has always been used as a literary art form to express one’s intense emotions or feelings, but do all poems have a true interpretation of what is being expressed? Many people do not have a keen eye when it comes to reading poetry and have a difficult time interpreting what the author is trying to express. Due to this misunderstanding, the audience lacks interest reading in this type of literary work. Through my journey with poems, I try to see the eye of the author and feel one’s emotions by rereading this type of literature. In this journey, I discover new meanings and different interpretations by just reading one poem that can change one’s perspective multiple times.
“Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is bonded with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words,”(Paul Engle). Poetry covers all spectrums of life, whether it encompasses morality, love, death, or finding ones true self. When reading poetry one may stumble across pure brilliance, words so powerful they have the ability challenge the mind. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman have that such gift, and are nothing short of illustrious.
Blake’s work was mentioned as ‘diseased and wild’ by John Ruskin, even though Ruskin noted that Blake’s mind as ‘great and wise’. However, it was only in the Twentieth century that Blake was acknowledged as a notable poet and artist. Blake’s poems are simple and lyrical in form, but there are complex works too, which needs the reader to work hard to understand what Blake means. This complexity is due to the presence of mythological in addition to the philosophical sources present in his work.