How Romantic Was William Blake?

The time period typically associated with the Romantic Poets and writers was one of the most turbulent to hit Europe ever. With the French Revolution sweeping the fields of Alsace, Lorraine and beyond, most monarchs, including those in England were wary of the new notions that were becoming common place among the commoners. Not since the Reformation of the 16th century was the continent in more turmoil. Yet with this build up of angst came a fertile bed for a new style of writing to grow in. This new style embraced many things that were ignored for one reason or another in the previous period of writing among the Augustans. To generalize, but not trying to be an idiot, one would have to attribute a heightened sense of nature to the Romantics (from this point on the Romantic writers will be simply called the Romantics.) This was done in an attempt to portray the "intimate self-revelation of the poet" (Perkins 9). In addition, there was an attempt to try and minimize the seemingly prepackaged and symmetrical lyrics of the previous age. The attempt to create poetry as a "'spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings'" was the goal of many of the main poets (Perkins 9). This was exemplified by the poet Keats when he said, "'if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all'" (Perkins 13).

These are some of the broad ideals of the writers, though not all embraced these ideals themselves. Yet inside of these standards was the content which was altered greatly from that of the Augustans. Some of the things stressed by the Romantics were synaesthesia, intuition, and "e`talage du moi" or the "display of the self" (Perkins 9). These were all used to create the feeling in poetry that the ...

... middle of paper ...

... all of his works into this scheme of thought and even differentiate further into one of the two camps of Innocence or Experience. This ability to write so extensively and from so many different viewpoints of Innocence and Experience could almost be called its own religion with a separate mythology and players. This again was amazingly ahead of his time and is on par with Milton as the epic of choice for all of English literature.

Blake, as described beforehand, came for all intents and purposes in between the Augustans and the Romantics. He was a visionary in how he wrote and about what he wrote. Previously he had not received much attention, but recently he has been given much more what is due to him. He was the first main writer and arguably the best and if he is looking down from heaven with arm around the lamb, I believe that he would be very pleased.