The Work of William Blake William Blake, a visionary English poet and painter who was a precursor of English Romanticism, combined the vocations of engraver, painter, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757, the son of a London hosier. Blake spent all of his relatively quiet life in London except for a stay at Felpham, on the southern coast of England, from 1800 to 1803. Largely self-taught, Blake was, however, widely read, and his poetry shows the influence of the German mystic Jakob Boehme, for example, and of Swedenborgianism. As a child, Blake wanted to become a painter. He was sent to drawing school at age 10 and at the age of 14 was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver. From sketching frequently at Westminster Abbey, he developed an interest in the Gothic style, which he combined with a taste for the art of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Durer. He exhibited his first artwork in 1780, married Catherine Boucher in 1782, and published his first poems, Poetical Sketches, in 1783. He quickly withdrew them from circulation, however, apparently offended by the condescending preface written by a patron. Amid its traditional, derivative elements are hints of his later innovative style and themes. As with all his poetry, this volume reached few contemporary readers. Blake produced and published his other works himself, except those which remained in manuscript at his death, by using his own unique method of engraving both illustration and text on copper plates and colouring the printed volumes by hand. He executed numerous engravings for books by others as well as watercolours and other kinds of paintings. Blake gave only ... ... middle of paper ... ...as not well known in his lifetime, but his influence is apparent in the work of several painters who knew him when he was an old man, particularly Samuel Palmer. He also influenced the Pre-Raphaelite painters of the 19th century, and his first editor was W. B. Yeats, who knew much of his poetry by heart. James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Joyce Cary, among others, found inspiration in his writings, and he has had considerable influence on modern literary criticism through the work of Northrop Frye. Today Blake is one of the most frequently discussed poets. Of those who actually knew Blake, Palmer left the most interesting estimate of him: "In him you saw the Maker, the Inventor . . . He was energy itself and shed around him a kindling influence, an atmosphere of life, full of the idea. . . . He was a man without a mask."
At the age of fourteen he dropped out of school to work as painter in railroad yards (ffrf.org).
William Blake focused on biblical images in the majority of his poetry and prose. Much of his well-known work comes from the two compilations Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The poems in these compilations reflect Blake's metamorphosis in thought as he grew from innocent to experienced. An example of this metamorphosis is the two poems The Divine Image and A Divine Image. The former preceded the latter by one year.
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.
William Blake was one of those 19th century figures who could have and should have been beatniks, along with Rimbaud, Verlaine, Manet, Cezanne and Whitman. He began his career as an engraver and artist, and was an apprentice to the highly original Romantic painter Henry Fuseli. In his own time he was valued as an artist, and created a set of watercolor illustrations for the Book of Job that were so wildly but subtly colored they would have looked perfectly at home in next month's issue of Wired.
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.
Why did William Blake decide to illustrate his own poems? In 1789, he published Songs of Innocence, and in 1794, he published its partner Songs of Experience. While it is not unusual for authors to publish their poems, Blake’s sets are different because he not only wrote the poems but illustrated and printed them himself. Blake could have done this because he could. He had experience and skills as a printer, but because he created the illustrations himself, it is possible to use them to find a deeper meaning for each poem (Lynch). This could have possibly been his intention. Using this, one can find more meanings for his pieces even when the illustrations do not necessarily compare with their poem.
Sir William Blake was known for his lucid writings and childlike imagination when it came down to his writings. Some will say that his writings were like day and night; for example, "The Lamb" and "The Tiger" or "The Little Boy Lost" and "The Little Boy Found." Born in the 18th century, Blake witnessed the cruel acts of the French and American Revolutions so his writings also, "revealed and exposed the harsh realities of life (Biography William Blake)". Although he never gained fame during his lifetime, Blake's work is thought of as to be genius and well respected today. "The lack of public recognition sent him into a severe depression which lasted from 1810-1817, and even his close friends thought him insane (William Blake,)". Blake once stated, "Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you (http://brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_blake.html )."
Williams’s parents were very supportive of his abilities and of whatever he would do. His parents enrolled him at a Paris drawing school at the age of ten. After finishing his school he was apprenticed to a master engraver at the age of fourteen. He was then sent to Westminster Abbey because they saw his abilities and talent. He was sent to Abbey to make drawings of monuments by James Basire. Abbey introduced William to the Gothic style of writing and this made his work unique. When he finished his apprenticeship he became a professional engraver. When he as twenty-one he engraved illustrations for Don Quixote.
For those living during the eighteenth-century, life was full of innovation and the reconstruction of social classes and societal norms. With the tumultuous effects of the American and French Revolution’s on the world and the Industrial Revolution in their own city, London became fertile soil for a new literary movement to flourish in . The Romantic era invoked in art, literature, and philosophy, a more aesthetic experience. Artist and poet, William Blake, not only lived through this time of great social change, but was an important contributor to the Romantic literary movement that occurred in his lifetime. William Blake uses his intuitive spirituality and artistic skills that he acquired throughout the early years of his life to write about important principles of the human condition and inherent nature of mankind in his works, namely “A Poison Tree”; his simplistic writing style and use of imagery allows his blunt and unflattering religious message to be universally understood and categorizes him as a seminal figure of the romantic era.
who are at the center of his work? If they are Contraries, then what does the
Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, George Gordon Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were all poets in the Romantic era. They all had a love of their country and wrote about nature and revolution in some of their poems.
William Blake's Songs of Innocence, “The Shepherd,” “The Echoing Green,” The Little Black Boy,” “The Blossom,” and “Laughing Song.”
In 1789, English poet William Blake first produced his famous poetry collection Songs of Innocence which “combines two distinct yet intimately related sequences of poems” (“Author’s Work” 1222). Throughout the years, Blake added more poems to his prominent Songs of Innocence until 1794, when he renamed it Songs of Innocence and Experience. The additional poems, called Songs of Experience, often have a direct counterpart in Blake’s original Songs of Innocence, producing pairs such as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” In Songs of Innocence and Experience, Blake uses musical devices, structure, and symbolism to develop the theme that experience brings both an awareness of potential evil and a tendency that allows it to become dominant over childhood
Children are always portrayed in books as angelic beings that are the closest to being perfect since they are innocent and pure. Many would suggest that this is not true, that children can be just as finable as adults. They cry when they do not get their way and throw tantrums that are quite obscene. However, the idea of this angelic child did not come into play until the 18th century. The poets William Blake and William Wordsworth are the two poets that coined this idea of the child. In the poems of these two authors, children are portrayed as innocent and pure beings and are closer to God than adults. Although these two poets have very different views of what children are like such as their interactions with adults, their perspective on
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.