Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Contrast between songs of innocence & songs of experience
William blake life and works
William Blake essays
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake was born in the year 1757 in the city of London. Although he had no recognized education he was taught to read and read a great range of literature. Influences from certain writers and poets can be seen in his later works. Blake studied drawing at a local school. He also studied temporarily at the Royal Academy School, in the early 1770's. This introduction to art formed the career of Blake as an engraver. Blake set up a print shop, which was not very successful. He found himself out of business. For the rest of his life Blake earned a living as an engraver and illustrator. Blake was a strict Christian and held very strong opinions on society. Blake was also a radical, compassionate to the American and French revolution. During his life time more and more factories were opened and more and more children were enslaved to work. Blake hated child labour and anything that incarcerated the human spirit. Therefore he was against the king, the setup of the church and the priest. Blake saw the church as repressing the human spirit and forcing people to work. He hated the laws of the church, such as people were put in classes according to their wealth. There was no possible way for the poor to move to a higher class as they couldn't marry into a wealthier class. Blake wrote poetry as a means of getting his ideas across to the rich. Although in Blake's lifetime very few of his poems were read and appreciated. Blake wrote two collections of poems, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. As evident form the titles of the collections these states seem to contradict one another. Innocence is remindful of children who are carefree and innocent. Innocence can mean blamelessness and purity or it can also mean inexperienced or simplicity. We can see form this that the states of innocence can either be for or against a person. Innocence as purity can be good as
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
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 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’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.
In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, many of the poems correlate in numerous aspects. For example, The Chimney Sweeper is a key poem in both collections that portrays the soul of a child The Chimney Sweeper in Innocence vs. The Chimney Sweeper in Experience In William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, many of the poems correlate in numerous aspects. For example, The Chimney Sweeper is a key poem in both collections that portrays the soul of a child with both a naïve and experienced persona. Blake uses the aspects of religion, light versus dark imagery, and the usage of the chimney sweeper itself to convey the similarities and differences of the figure in both poems. The Chimney Sweeper is an excellent example of how William Blake incorporated religion into his poetic works.
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. One of Blake’s most famous works is The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. In this collection, Blake illuminates the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children and follow them into adulthood.... ...
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.
two entirely different worlds, but it is my belief that it is not the Lamb
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 ?
Blake was angered by what he saw in his homeland as other countries started fighting for their independence and equality whilst his country stayed dormant, even though he felt that there was a serious need for serious action. Even though Blake wasn't a typical romantic writer, he too possessed the same. beliefs of fighting for what one believes in, and the urge to be. liberated from the oppression of society. So, by being a writer of the romantic period, watching a controlled and restricted society not showing an intent to break free and fight against the monarchy.
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are collections of poems that utilize the imagery, instruction, and lives of children to make a larger social commentary. The use of child-centered themes in the two books allowed Blake to make a crucial commentary on his political and moral surroundings with deceptively simplistic and readable poetry. Utilizing these themes Blake criticized the church, attacking the hypocritical clergy and pointing out the ironies and cruelties found within the doctrines of organized religion. He wrote about the horrific working conditions of children as a means to magnify the inequality between the poor working class and the well to do aristocracy.
He disapproved the use of black slaves as he believed that it was immoral to exploit people on the basis of their appearance. Blake was an advanced and modern thinker who did not accept the typical Christian point of view. When we dwell deeper in the poem we realize that it also depicts colonialism, Blake wrote this poem at a time when slavery was persisting in London and many black people were working for English aristocrat families. It wouldn 't be wrong to say that the boy and his mother were also taken away from the “southern wild” presumably Africa to England and the whole poem revolves around their life in England. Blake’s motivation to write this poem was to create awareness among people that they should condemn such activities. He wanted to eliminate the mental block which was persisting among people in the
In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake differentiates between being experienced and being innocent. In the poem "Spring," the speaker focuses on the coming of spring and the excitement surrounding it which is emphasized by the trochaic meter of the poem. Everyone, including the animals and children, is joyful and getting ready for the new season, a season of rebirth and a new arrival of nature’s gifts.
There are often two sides to everything: chocolate and vanilla, water and fire, woman and man, innocence and experience. The presence of two opposing items allows for harmony and balance in the world. Without water, fire cannot be put out and without woman there can be no man. William Blake’s poetry collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience draws parallels between poems of “innocence” and poems of “experience”. His poem The Lamb is mirrored by his poem The Tyger.