William Blake’s “The Garden of Love” was first published in book two of Blake’s famous work, Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. The first book in this series, The Songs of Innocence, deals with simplistic themes and a benevolent God. In 1794’s The Songs of Experience, however, Blake portrays the other, darker side of the human soul and a tyrannous God of repression. Blake’s use of vivid imagery and contradiction in “The Garden of Love” is intriguing especially when considering the historical and biographical contexts in which the work was composed.
Many Romantic works come from both the poet’s individual perceptions as well as the social consciousness of that era. “The Garden of Love” is no exception. This poem functions to brutally satirize both the oppression of the Church, which had a societal impact, and the urbanization of Lambeth, which had a personal impact on Blake’s life. As Blake has been known to do, he utilizes contrast to make the decay of his world blatant to the reader. Such contrasting is visible when the image of a life-giving garden decays into an image of death. This parallels the events that took place in Blake’s own life, when his rural home became swallowed up by urban sprawl.
This particular poem was written in 1793, shortly after Blake and his wife moved out of London to a house in an area known as Lambeth Marsh on the Thames River. This new home was surrounded by a large garden and rested in a relatively new development known as Hercules Buildings. Blake and his wife had relocated to Lambeth possibly because of its rural appearance, and Blake considered it to be his own Garden of Eden (Ackroyd 128). In “The Garden of Lo...
... middle of paper ...
...caying under the shadow of the Church. “The Garden of Love” deals with Blake’s corner of a society that he feels is headed in the wrong direction. By exhibiting the way in which he personally has been affected by the oppressive nature of the Church, Blake represents the loss of liberty in a society that he feels is becoming bound by briars.
Works Cited
Ackroyd, Peter. Blake. New York: Ballantine, 1995.
Blake, William. “The Garden of Love.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Vol. 2. Ed. M.H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2000. 56.
Reinhart, Charles. “William Blake (1757-1827).” Dictionary of Literary Biography 93:
British Romantic Poets, 1789-1832. Ed. John Greenfield. New York: Gale, 1990. 14-56.
Schorer, Mark. William Blake: The Politics of Vision. New York: Vintage, 1959.
Since 776 BCE, the Olympics have been a way for people of different cultures to come together and compete in friendly competition. In 1892 the first modern Olympics were held in Athens, although it had been over a thousand years since the last game it still had brought together an assortment of different religions and ethnic groups together. Many factors shaping the Olympic Games reflect the changes that have taken place in our world since the last game in 393 CE in Greece such changes include woman’s suffrage, global economy, world wars, and proving competency.
Ed. Maynard Mack. 5th edition. New York: Norton 1987. 549-560.
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.
Abstract: William Blake's Songs of Innocence contains a group of poetic works that the artist conceptualized as entering into a dialogue with each other and with the works in his companion work, Songs of Experience. He also saw each of the poems in Innocence as operating as part of an artistic whole creation that was encompassed by the poems and images on the plates he used to print these works. While Blake exercised a fanatical degree of control over his publications during his lifetime, after his death his poems became popular and were encountered without the contextual material that he intended to accompany them.
...olishness. This ranges from hard work, wealth and poverty, marriage, and the power of the tongue. The Biblical teachings on these subjects are distinct and offer God’s view on the subjects. Therefore, there is no defense of being ignorant of these Hebrew teachings of wisdom and foolishness, and diligence and follies.
Professor Chris Pelling of UCL wrote The Ancient Olympics. In addition, the author is a member of the UCL Department of Greek and Latin. In this article, the author describe and explain how sports were more than a competition in the ancient Greece. His hypothesis was that sports were a way to get honor and power instead of just competing. It represents more than a simple crown of leaves and olive-branch at the Olympics. It gave power, fame and honor to the athlete and their home city. In addition, they were awarded with many material rewards such as money, and women. For instance, the primary method employed in this research consisted
Stratospheric ozone absorbs 97-99% of ultraviolet radiation. As this protective layer continues to dissentigrate, human health will suffer. One American dies every hour from skin cancer, a direct result of ozone depletion by anthropogenic chemicals, primarily CFCs, which damage the ozone layer. Alternate chemicals are now being used in the place of CFCs that will not damage statospheric ozone, and there is international recognition of the importance of developing these chemicals. The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty which limits the production of ozone depleting substances. Still, human health is at risk from the deletion of ozone, and the risk factor will continue to rise unless people and industries become more aware of the implications connected with everyday use of chemicals which destroy stratospheric ozone.
Major Points: Organ donation myths, Recipient Selection, Legislation and Policy, Current Trend, Let’s Pay Organ Donors.
In the Garden of Love Blake talks about how the green, the place of childhood play has been corrupted by a repressive religious morality. Blake describes the Garden as being ‘filled with graves and tombstones’, this confirms his criticism of restrictive conventional morality. Contrary to the view that pleasure leads to corruption, Blake believed that it was the suppression of desire, not the enactment of it that produced negative effects. Blake hated organised religion, and the Garden of Love explores some of the restrictions he saw and det...
The theme of the suffering innocent person, dying and being diseased, throws a dark light onto the London seen through the eyes of William Blake. He shows us his experiences, fears and hopes with passionate images and metaphors creating a sensibility against oppression hypocrisy. His words come alive and ask for changes in society, government and church. But they remind us also that the continued renewal of society begins with new ideas, imagination and new works in every area of human experience.
In Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789 and 1794), William Blake arouses readers' minds and leads them into a path of finding their own answers and conclusions to his poems. He sets up his poems in the first book, Songs of Innocence, with a few questions as if they were asked from a child's perspective since children are considered the closest representation of innocence in life. However, in the second book, Songs of Experience, Blake's continues to write his poems about thought-provoking concepts except the concepts happen to be a little bit more complex and relevant to experience and time than Songs of Innocence.
8th ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. 662-72. Print.
What is the ozone layer? The ozone layer is a part of the stratosphere containing highly poisonous O3 gas with a strong odor. Ozone is formed by the action of solar ultraviolet light on oxygen. Ozone at ground level is a health hazard. High concentrations of ozone at ground level are dangerous to breathe and can damage the lungs. However, the ozone layer inhibits most ultraviolet and other high energy radiation from entering to the earth's surface.
In Henrik Ibsen’s play, “Ghosts,” Ibsen portrayed the significance of how society’s system of perpetuation of the original standards and morality, could corrupt the new generation’s idea of a proper society. Ibsen also shows the audience how social status, as well as situations involving moral standards of a family, could corrupt peoples’ views of morality.
The San Andreas fault was brought dramatically to world attention in 1906 when sudden displacement along the fault produced the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. This earthquake was but one of many that have resulted throughout its life of about 15-20 million years.