William Blake's Attitude Towards the Poor
William Blake was born in 1757 and of an early age he wrote poetry, soon enough he became well known to the Church and also the wealthy. Blake was very critical towards the Church despite being a firm believer of God. He thought that the Church were overpowering the poor side of the Country. Blake would get his message through to others in the use of poetry, if people studied the poems they would get a clear idea of Blake's views. William Blake wrote two books which included some of his poems, they were called 'Songs of Innocence' and 'Songs of Experience.' Songs of Innocence was written in 1789, five years earlier than 'Songs of Experience'. This book contains poems of trickery, I say this because if you just read the poems you would think that he is writing about happiness, but if you look harder at each line individually you would see that he is trying to state the unhappiness in the world, the darker side of the poems. The other book 'Songs of Experience' contains some of the same titles of poems but with different contents. If you compare the two books you will see that this book contains the truth about the world, with the misery.
Everyone was certain in thinking if they work as what they are and work hard at it, they will go to heaven. People on the poor side thought going to heaven would be freedom. Blake doesn't just get his message through to the Church but also the wealthy, he wanted the affluent people to know the damages they have caused in the direction of the poor. Blake died in 1828, at a grand age of 71, in is time he had made a huge range of poems from Short to Long. William Blake just wanted everyone to know what he clearly saw in life.
The poem 'The Chimney Swe...
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...espondent occasion when the poor get married.
William Blake chose to criticise the Church and the wealthy, including
the priests and the King. Blake chose to criticise the priest and King
for not noticing and accepting the bad environment the poor are living
in. Blake doesn't like the Priest and Church for not caring for the
poor, even though they worship God and the Priest, it is unfair. Blake
thought very highly of children, he felt sorry for the children who
became chimney sweeping. He states this many times in his poetry. He
thought that the children were the future and that they shouldn't be
treated like dirt. They shouldn't get starved for hunger, the wealthy
should have looked after the children, but they didn't. The children
didn't get any importance then. Blake wanted the rich to know the
suffering and pain they have put the poor side through.
From childhood he was unlike those around him. He went to school to study art and found his love of poetry. From his early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions. He spoke of seeing God and the Angels. He married his with Catherine Boucher in 1782. His brother, Robert died, but this is where Blake got a lot of inspiration for his work. In 1789 Blake wrote and illustrated the popular Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience in 1794. His poetry was extremely non-conformist and focused on imagination, rather than reason. Both works have many common parallels and themes. His poetry also deals with the common aspect of a romanticism work; it has moments of sin, suffering and salvation. In Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper, it is a heartbreaking poem about the young children that were forced into doing labor as chimneysweepers. Mostly because they were the only ones small enough to fit in the spaces and they were sold into that work. It was damaging and cruel how they treated these children and Blake writes about it in such a powerful way. In the first stanza alone the reader learns about the difficult life and the suffering this child has had to overcome, “When my mother died when I was young, my father sold me while yet my tongue…so, your Chimney’s I sweep and in soot I sleep.” (Songs of Innocence) This poor child is portrayed so innocently and gentle, yet leads this suffering unfortunate life. People treated
William Blake was a famous English poet, who lived during the Romantic Age. Blake was unrecognized and unappreciated during his life, however, now he is considered one of the greatest poets of his age. William Blake was born on November 28, 1757. Growing up in London, his parents soon realized that he was no ordinary child. He was homeschooled and then later sent to drawing school. Later in his life, he created famous poems including A Poison Tree, London, and The Tyger. William Blake’s quiet and unrecognized life inspired by the bible greatly affected his many writings and paintings he made during his lifetime.
William Blake was first and foremost an imaginative genius. He worked as both a painter and an author who beautifully illustrated not only his own works but also illustrated others writings. His artistic skill is unrivalled for diversity as he created each copy of his books with slight differences, mainly in colour and tones. He illustrates his opinions on innocence and experience through numerous poems in his work ‘Songs of innocence and experience’ and numerous other books. Much of his work deals with the concept of both innocence and experience through religion and contrary statements.
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.
William Blake, was born in 1757 and died in 1827, created the poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell. Blake grew up in a poor environment. He studied to become an Engraver and a professional artist. His engraving took part in the Romanticism era. The Romanticism is a movement that developed during the 18th and early 19th century as a reaction against the Restoration and Enlightenment periods focuses on logic and reason. Blake’s poetry would focus on imagination. When Blake created his work, it gained very little attention. Blake’s artistic and poetic vision consists 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 animals and man.
William Blake is remembered by his poetry, engravements, printmaking, and paintings. He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain on November 28, 1757. William was the third of seven siblings, which two of them died from infancy. As a kid he didn’t attend school, instead he was homeschooled by his mother. His mother thought him to read and write. As a little boy he was always different. Most kids of his age were going to school, hanging out with friends, or just simply playing. While William was getting visions of unusual things. At the age of four he had a vision of god and when he was nine he had another vision of angles on trees.
William Blake was born in London, England on November 28, 1757 to his parents Catherine Wright Armitage and James Blake (1-1). William rarely was present at school. He was mostly taught by his mother (1-2). At the age of ten Blake enrolled into the Henry Pars Drawing School (1-3). William Blake began writing at a very young age (1-1). His visions contributed to his writings and his artwork (1-2). Blake’s first vision was of the prophet Ezekiel standing under a tree occupied with angels at the age of ten (1-2).
William Blake’s works’ were simpler than Lord Byron’s. Blake took a softer approach as he expressed his ideas without saying too much. His works included phrases that had more meaning to its simple message. He took what he had learned in the world and added it into his poetry. He was able to capture all sides of life whether it dealt with a child or the unknown presence of an object. He was bale to take the little and turn it into something big that would be remembered for a long time.
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.
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
William Blake was an English romantic poet who lived from 1757 to 1827 through both the American and the French revolutions. Although he lived during the Romantic Age, and was clearly part of the movement, Blake was a modern thinker who had a rebellious political spirit. He was the first to turn poetry and art into sociopolitical weapons to be raised rebelliously against the establishment. His poetry exemplified many of the same topics being discussed today. Although he was known as both a madman and a mystic, (Elliott) his poetry is both relevant and radical. He employed a brilliant approach as he took in the uncomfortable political and moral topics of his day and from them he created unique artistic representations. His poetry recounts in symbolic allegory the negative effects of the French and American revolutions and his visual art portrays the violence and sadistic nature of slavery. Blake was arguably one of the most stubbornly anti-oppression and anti-establishment writers in the English canon.
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.
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.
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.
LaGuardia, Cheryl. "WILLIAM BLAKE: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE." Library Journal 128.9 (2003): 140. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 July 2011.