William Blake’s early interest and aptitude for drawing had set a blueprint for his next life in writing inspiring poems. He believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of men. His time of being raised in a household of seven children with only five surpassing infancy, most likely gave way to his powerful writings. Most of all his work features some type of wearisome protagonist, who is attempting to revolt against some greater being; it could be politically religious or the theme of love and marriage. It is unclear exactly were Blake stood in terms of his beliefs in God; however, William Blake made many references to God and a supernatural being within his works of writing poems.
One of his familiar works, “Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” dealt with the theme of opposition is true friendship. The title itself gives away the sense that marriage definitely has its downsides instead of right away believing that the bride and the broom are in an everlasting love by saying the words, “I do.” This particular poem also has the sense of feeling that Blake’s intentions on writing this poem was because he felt that he was protecting God’s creations by acknowledging the Bible’s lies. His emphasis in this poem is to insure the readers to be themselves, “The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow (Blake).” To add on, Blake acknowledges to us the reader about denial and emphasizes that our sanity comes from God. Basically William Blake is pretty much using insightful ironic theory to his work of writing “Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”
Through his particular writing works such as, “The Voice of The Devil”, Blake establishes God’s creations to his viewer...
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...nt. The critics usually in this specific approach insist on the notion that if the author is trying too hard to get his or her message across to the reader. That it could actually decrease the writer’s actual point of emphasis. The author would generally get of topic because their mind is now trying to prove other points to the reader that really do not have anything to do with their initial idea.
There seems to be a cycle type of theme to William Blake’s works, he argues that objects have an equal amount of form. This theory of the cycle would be considered most effective when changes in time would occur such as the evolution of societies in which as the normal rotation of the earth, the change in weather or seasons and the change of the human population. His belief that nature always works in a cyclic form is the main generalization for this particular theory.
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Although many of the Romantic poets displayed a high degree of anxiety concerning the way in which their works were produced and transmitted to an audience, few, if any, fretted quite as much as William Blake did. Being also a highly accomplished engraver and printer, he was certainly the only one of the Romantics to be able to completely move beyond mere fretting. Others may have used their status or wealth to exert their influence upon the production process, but ultimately, they were at the mercy of editors, publishers, and printers and relied on others to turn their visions into published works. Blake, on the other hand, was his own editor, engraver, printer, and publisher. He was able to control to the minutest detail every single aspect of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from conception all the way to the selling of the finished volume. Short of being his own purchaser, Blake achieved the highest possible degree of control over the work’s transmission, and considering that there are only nine known complete copies of the work (twelve total including variants and uncolored prints), even the audience itself was almost handpicked (Ackroyd, 265).
William Blake is a literature genius. Most of his work speaks volume to the readers. Blake’s poem “The Mental Traveller” features a conflict between a male and female that all readers can relate to because of the lessons learned as you read. The poet William Blake isn’t just known for just writing. He was also a well-known painter and a printmaker. Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry. His poems are from the Romantic age (The end of the 18th Century). He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain. He was the third of seven children. Even though Blake was such an inspiration as a writer he only went to school just enough to read and write. According to Bloom’s critical views on William Blake; one of Blake’s inspirations was the Bible because he believed and belonged to the Moravian Church.
The theme of authority is possibly the most important theme and the most popular theme concerning William Blake’s poetry. Blake explores authority in a variety of different ways particularly through religion, education and God. Blake was profoundly concerned with the concept of social justice. He was also profoundly a religious man. His dissenting background led him to view the power structures and legalism that surrounded religious establishments with distrust. He saw these as unwarranted controls over the freedom of the individual and contrary to the nature of a God of liberty. Figures such as the school master in the ‘schoolboy’, the parents in the ‘chimney sweeper’ poems, the guardians of the poor in the ‘Holy Thursday’, Ona’s father in ‘A Little girl lost’ and the priestly representatives of organised religion in many of the poems, are for Blake the embodiment of evil restriction.
Blake wanted to show what happens when humans do not possess the virtues of faith and hope. For example, the poem opens up by stating “A little black thing among the snow crying weep, weep. Above all, the dismal lines in the poem point out that those human beings have a natural ability to defile anything they come across, More importantly, in the last stanza the narrator states “Who make up a heaven of our misery,” (Line 12). This is interpreted as losing faith in heaven, God, and King George III.
Blake’s poetry focuses on imagination. When Blake created his work, it gained very little attention. Blake’s artistic and poetic vision is reflected in his creations. Blake was against the Church of England because he thought the doctrines were being misused as a form of social control, it meant the people were taught to be passively obedient and accept oppression, poverty, and inequality. In Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell, he shows that good requires evil in order to exist through imagery of animals and man.
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.
William Blake was born in 1757 during a time when Romanticism was on the rise. Romantic poets of this day and age, living in England, experienced changes from a wealth-centered aristocracy to a modern industrial nation where power shifted to large-scale employers thus leading to the enlargement of the working class. Although Blake is seen as a very skillful writer his greatest successes were his engravings taught to him by a skilled sculpture. Blake differed from other poets in that he never received a formal education. His only education consisted of the arts, and therefore he enrolled in the Royal Academy of the Arts around the age of twelve. It was only in his spare time that he showed any interest in poetry. At the age of twenty-four he married Catherine Boucher who in fact had been illiterate at the time but Blake soon taught her to read. From there he pursued teaching in drawing and painting, illustrated books, and engraved designs made by other artists. It was only after many failures at the attempt of public recognition, and after years of isolation, that Blake had experienced his first audience. It was a small group of painters that admired his works and listened to every one of his talks. Blake is best known for intertwining his artistic talent and poetic flow. Proof of such success is seen in "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience", in which almost every poem has been engraved and beautifully sculpted onto a plaque. These two sets of poems represented what Blake believed to be the "two contrary states of the human soul".
...sex, she was happy and joyful because she is finally being deflowered. It is known that she was a virgin because of the imagery Blake provided for her bed of crimson joy. Soon after, she realizes that she has made a big mistake, even if those moments of sex made her happy. She has to live with a disease for the rest of her life. She is not fully understanding about it until a significant amount of time passes (thirty years in between the two illustrations). If the two illustrations were not presented for this poem, the readers would not gain an understanding of the poem fully. Blake tells the continuation of the poem and storyline without using literature. The moral of the poem is even if one makes a mistake and catches a life-threatening disease, it does not define who they are. Overall, the woman caught the undesireable infection and she learned to live with it.
Blake had an uncanny ability to use his work to illustrate the unpleasant and often painful realities around him. His poetry consistently embodies an attitude of revolt against the abuse of class and power that appears guided by a unique brand of spirituality. His spiritual beliefs reached outside the boundaries of religious elites loyal to the monarchy. “He was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English Civil War “(E. P. Thompson). Concern with war and the blighting effects of the industrial revolution were displayed in much of his work.
He led strong beliefs that were occasionally mentioned in his work. One was that everyone is equal and is mentioned in 'All Religions Are One': "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)" He based most of his works in the style of Romanticism - Blake wrote from the heart, he let his thoughts and beliefs take over. Some of Blake?s poems include ?
During the British Romantic period, some writers used material from the Bible or imitated the Bible in style of writing or content. William Blake, a Romantic writer, engraver, and painter, believed that “the Bible was the greatest work of poetry ever written” (Barker 2004). The Bible influenced him throughout his life, specifically influencing both his writing and his art. There are many references to Biblical themes within his writing, and there are also many references to specific passages of Scripture (Barker 2004). The lines “O thou, with dewy locks, who looked down / Thro’ the clear windows of the morning. . .”
During the mid 1800’s was a remarkable era called the Romanticism. Some political and social milestones of this era included The American Revolution, The French Revolution, and The Industrial Revolution. During these events, the “theme” more or less was a type of laissez faire which means, “let the people do as they please.” WIlliam Blake was a famous poet in this time period, as well as Samuel Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and George Gordon. Novels and poems were written in this time to express the ways Romanticism was shown and how melancholy was trending.
William Blake was born and raised in London from 1757 to 1827. Throughout his early years, Blake experienced many strange and unusual visions, claiming to have seen “angels and ghostly monks” (Moore). For those reasons, William Blake decided to write about mystical beings and Gods. Two examples of the poet expressing his point of view are seen in “The Tyger” and “The Lamb.” Both poems demonstrate how the world is and to sharpen one’s perception. People perceive the world in their own outlook, often times judging things before they even know the deeper meaning of its inner personification. Blake’s wondrous questions actually make an acceptable point because he questions whether God created the tiger with the same intentions as he did with the lamb.
In his work, Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, William Blake uses the aforementioned contrasting states of being to illustrate his unique view of the world around him. Through this work, Blake lays bare his soulful views of religion and ethics, daring the reader to continue on in their narcissistic attitudes and self-serving politics. While Blake's work had countless themes, some of the most prevalent were religious reform, social change, and morality. Philosophically, one would think that William Blake was a Deist; however Blake rejected the Deist view of life. He was a devout Christian, yet he also wanted nothing to do with the church or their teachings. These views give Blake a refreshingly sincere quality with regards to his art and writings. Blake frequently alluded to Biblical teachings in his work and, more often than not, used corresponding story lines to rail against the Church's views and accepted practices. One may say however, that Blake's universal appeal lies within his social commentary. Similar to a fable, Blake weaves a poetically mystical journey for the reader, usually culminating in a moral lesson. One such poem, "A Poison Tree," clearly illustrates some of William Blake's moral beliefs. With his use of imagery, as well as an instinctive knowledge of human nature, William Blake shows just how one goes from the light to the darkness (from innocence to experience) by the repression of emotions.