Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
London by William Blake Critical Analysis
London by William Blake Critical Analysis
London by William Blake Critical Analysis
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: London by William Blake Critical Analysis
“William Blake (1757-1827) was an artist, poet, mystic, visionary and radical thinker.” (4) London comes from ‘Songs of innocence and Experience’ written by Blake in the 1790’s. The poem presents an incredibly negative view of London. In Blake’s view, the terrible living conditions are what caused physical, moral, and spiritual decay. The image of “the Chimney-sweepers cry/ Every blackening church appalls” conveys Blake’s attitude towards The Church of England. He doesn’t agree in having money spent on church buildings, while children live in poverty; forced to clean chimneys. Blake perceives this lack of compassion as a mockery of the beliefs of love and care that Christianity is founded on. In the third verse, we encounter the line, “blood down Palace walls”. This is a clear allusion to the French Revolution which took place only a few years before London was written. Blake also sees rapid urbanization as dangerous and unhealthy for humanity.
Nobody is free or happy in the poem; children are no longer free to enjoy their childhood and instead work in dangerous conditions. Charters restrict London’s streets and The River Thames, which leads to the rise of the few and the continual decline of the marginalized.
This essay will take a close reading of London, and examine the aforementioned conflicts that Blake sees in London society:
William Blake was born in London in 1757 and grew up without a formal education. The bible influenced Blake from early on, and it “was a profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life.” (1) his love of the bible was so great, that in many occasions, he claimed to have ‘visions’. These visions manifested in he form of angels, Ezekiel, and even, god himself. ...
... middle of paper ...
...imism in the future. It states that when woman marry, their husbands will cheat on them with mistresses, and thus the women will die from the diseases their men contracted.
“blights with plague the Marriage hearse.”
In summation, William Blake’s London describes a journey through London, all the while providing an insight into the terrible conditions faced by the city’s poor. To do his, it begins with an attack on Capitalism; the custody of the streets and The Thames River. It then moves to exemplify London’s social enslavement. Blake also critiques he Church and is failure to protect he most vulnerable. Blake also describes the cry of the chimney sweeper and the blackening of the church walls, suggesting that the church neglected hose who needed it most. The poem end with a grim vision of child prostitution and the horrific consequence of sexual diseases.
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.
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.
However, keep in mind that this poem was published in 1794. A renowned movement in history had just taken place a few years before this poem was published. That movement was The First Great Awakening. Christine Heyrman of The Univeristy of Delaware describes the First Great Awakening as “a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s.” (Heyrnman 1). This means that just before Blake published his poem, a revamping of Christian culture was being taken place in The United States. This is essential information to keep in mind because Blake, less than thirty years later, questions Christianity in its entirety through a poem called “The
angered him and inspired him to convey his ideas and feelings through the poem 'London'. In the poem, Blake travels through London and describes what he sees. And as a result, he sees a severely oppressed society that is caused by the authority, such as royalty, and the church. This is as Blake sees. that even the streets and the thames are 'chartered' and governed.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution in England in the 18th century, many children were forced to work against their own will, to support the growing need for labor in the demanding economy. William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” meticulously portrays the mindsets of two individuals obligated to carry out these societal expectations of working at a very young age. However, contrary to societies opinion on harmful child labor, Blake uses irony and sarcasm to convey his critical allegation of the wrongdoings of the church and society on their lack of effort to intervene and put an end to the detrimental job of adolescent chimney sweeping. By creating this ironic atmosphere, Blake establishes a poem that is full of despair and suffering but is sugar-coated and disguised with happiness and content provided by the church and society of London.
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 this 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).
?London? is a poem of serious social satire directed against social institutions. According to Blake author Michael Phillips ?it is a poem whose moral realism is so severe that it is raised to the intensity of apocalyptic vision.? Blake becomes more specific in his descriptions of the prevalent evil and moral decay of society as the poem progresses. Blake?s informative nature is clearly evident in ?London? as he ?points the finger? and exposes powerful institutions.
London is a poem about the misery and despair in eighteenth century England. The speaker is a young man who is walking the streets late at night watching the darkness wrap itself around the people. The speaker is trying to explain and show to the reader that there is more going, than what one sees on the surface. As the reader gets further into the poem one can feel the misery surrounding the citizens of the city and envision their defeat. The speaker is pulling aside the veil to share the truths of the pain and suffering the young and the old are experiencing. As the poem continues it becomes clear that the lines one reads are an allusion to what is hidden between the lines. Initially the work can be read as one poem but when the reader goes back they can see that in a sense it is in fact two poems. In William Blake’s London, he uses irony, an oppressive tone, and imagery in order to depict a dark and anguished city.
The ending line of stanza two tells us, “The mind-forg'd manacles I hear”, this is Blake’s way of showing to us that there are no free minds in London. Everyone had been brainwashed by society and they could not think for themselves because of that. In the next stanza Blake describes the corruption of the Church of England by mentioning, “Every black'ning Church apalls” this shows the dirtiness of the buildings and shows us that there is a possibility that he is a strong catholic. This line ties in very well with the line directly above it “How the chimney-sweeper's cry”, both of the lines are discussing how dirty and filthy London is. We could also think of these lines in a different way Blake could be telling us that the priests are corrupt and dirty rather than just physically dirty. In the final line of this stanza, Blake states. “And the hapless soldier's sigh, runs in blood down palace-walls.” This could be considered as another sign of corruption, and that monarchs are to blame for the death in London a...
The poems ‘lines composed on Westminster Bridge’ and ‘London’ are created by William Wordsworth and William Blake respectively. Wordsworth’s work originated in the eighteenth century and he himself lived in the countryside, and rarely visited large cities such as London. This is reflected on his poem, making it personal to his experience in London, however William Blake on the other hand had a vast knowledge of London and was actually a London poet, which allowed him to express his views of London from a Londoner’s point of view. I therefore will be examining comparisons in both poems, as well as their contrasting views of London and the poetic devices used to express their opinions.
In "London", William Blake brings to light a city overrun by poverty and hardship. Blake discards the common, glorifying view of London and replaces it with his idea of truth. London is nothing more but a city strapped by harsh economic times where Royalty and other venues of power have allowed morality and goodness to deteriorate so that suffering and poverty are all that exist. It is with the use of three distinct metaphors; "mind-forg'd manacles", "blackning Church", and "Marriage hearse", that Blake conveys the idea of a city that suffers from physical and psychological imprisonment, social oppression, and an unraveling moral society.
William Blake uses repetition, rhyming and imagery in his poem to help promote the idea that London, England is not the city that people dream that it is, the city itself can be a
...ginning of industrialization in Britain (known as the Industrial Revolution). “Something that made the plight of the poor and uneducated even more miserable and hopeless. Adults and children alike were forced to work long hours in factories… working under dangerous and inhumane conditions for a meager wage.”() Catastrophic events affected William in different ways, for example, his arrest in August 12, 1803, but this event was outside of the American war Independence in 1775 and the French Revolution. This affected William, because he was a religious man and he believed in freedom, the Bible had an impact on Blake, which is the main reason why he believed in the freedom of the human spirit. The effects of these two big contradictions of the Romanticism and War were that Blake (a) took it as inspiration and (b) wrote a poem about those historical events.
William Blake, one of the infamous English romantic poets, is most known for his romantic views on conventional scenes and objects, which were presented in his works The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. The first collection was published in 1789, and addresses subjects such as suffering and death from the innocent and optimistic perspective of a child. The later collection addresses these same issues, but is told from the perspective of an experienced bard. The poems contained in The Songs of Innocence often have a counter part in the second collection that reflects a darker or more corrupted take on the same subject. For example, the purity presented in the creation of “The Lamb” is dramatically contrasted with its shameful counterpart “The Tyger”. In this essay, I will argue that William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” alludes to his belief in a darker side of creation and the implications of the Industrial Revolution, my argument is based on Blake’s use of rhetorical questions, word choice, and the poem’s context; specifically in the fourth and fifth stanzas. In the beginning of the poem the tiger appears as a striking and wondrous creature, however, as the poem progresses, the tiger takes on a symbolic meaning, and comes to be a physical manifestation of the spiritual and moral problem the poem explores: creation, divine and manmade.
...reedom and free will. The poem, “The Little Black Boy”, was written as the poet’s response to the evils prevailing in the society at that point of time like child labour. The poet’s ability to holistically view the universe is evident when he describes earth as “a little space”. This is a direct contradiction to the geocentric theory that the Church propagated at a point of time. Traces of the Bible are found in this poem too, in the use of words such as “lambs”. If one were to point at a trademark feature of Blake’s poetry, it would be the description of simple elements of nature in splendid, yet facile language with subtle echoes of concepts, events or people in Christianity and the Bible. His poetry uses images and illustrations to the effect that the readers are able to visually imagine the anecdotes and occurrences in the Bible and hence enjoy them better.