Comparison between William Blake and William Wordsworth’s Views of London
William Blake grew up in the slums of London and this is shown in his poem, he wrote his poem in the slums and back alleys of London as he never had very much money. He describes London as being “charter’d”, this gives us the impression that everything has rules and boundaries in London, and that there is no mystery to be discovered. Also chartered means on a map, almost as if it is owned, by the king perhaps. The line in which the word is on, “I wander through each charter’d street,
near where the charter’d Thames does flow,” makes us feel as if every thing is owned and nothing is natural, like all the people in London are prisoners of society
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...
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...f London, but they only do this because of their life before they wrote the poems. One poet grew up in the rich area outside London and moved there later, whereas the other poet grew up in the slums of London. They never had the chance to see London through each others eyes, if they had they may have thought differently of London. Both poets grew up and wrote about what each thought of the same place, London is a city that is magnificent and beautiful to the people who know it like that. Whereas it is filthy and dirty to the people who have grown up in those filthy dirty areas. In my opinion London is a place that is somewhere between these two extreme versions of it, a place where there is magnificent splendour but also a place where there is filth and poverty. Theses poems where written two hundred and six years ago and London has not changed that much since then.
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Before delving any deeper into this poem and its meaning, a few basic questions must be answered first. I believe the speaker to be William Blake himself. I am able to infer this from the repeated use of the pronoun “I.” Thought the course of the poem, the speaker’s temperament changes. At the start of the poem the speaker ...
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.
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.
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.
?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.
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.
The imagery of nature and humanity intermingling presents Blake's opinion on the inborn, innate harmony between nature and man. The persona of the poem goes on to express the `gentle streams beneath our feet' where `innocence and virtue meet'. This is where innocence dwells: synchronization with nature, not synchronization with industry where `babes are reduced to misery, fed with a cold usurous hand' as in the experienced version of `Holy Thursday'. The concept of the need for the individual's faithfulness to the laws of nature and what is natural is further reiterated in `the marriage of heaven and hell' in plate 10 where Blake states `where man is not, nature is barren'. The most elevated form of nature is human nature and when man resists and consciously negates nature, `nature' becomes `barren'. Blake goes on to say `sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires'. This harks back to `the Songs of Innocence' `A Cradle Song' where the `infants smiles are his own smiles'. The infant is free to act out its desires as it pleases. It is unbound, untainted. Blake's concern is for the pallid and repressed, subjugated future that awaits the children who must `nurse unacted desires' and emotions in this new world of industrialisation. Despairingly, this is restated again in `the mind-forg'd manacles' of `London'. The imagery of the lambs of the `Songs of Innocence' `Introduction' is developed in `the Chimney Sweeper' into the image of `Little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, that curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd'.
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
William Blake is a poet and an illustrator. He is best known for two collections of poems, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In the two collections there are often poems that are paired together to convey one of Blake’s five recurring themes. One of the themes Blake uses is how man is born innocent and is corrupted through experience. A pair of poems that illustrates this theme is “The Echoing Green” from Songs of Innocence and “The Garden of Love” from Songs of Experience. “The Echoing Green” portrays a child who is blissful and pure. “The Garden of love” depicts the same child who is now an adult coming back to where he used play; however, he is disheartened with the sight of corruption that he did not see as a child.
Authors, William Wordsworth and William Blake convey different messages and themes in their poems, “The World is Too Much with Us” and “The Tyger” consecutively by using the different mechanics one needs to create poetry. Both poems are closely related since they portray different aspects of society but the message remains different. Wordsworth’s poem describes a conflict between nature and humanity, while Blake’s poem issues God’s creations of completely different creatures. In “The World is Too Much with Us,” we figure the theme to be exactly what the title suggests: Humans are so self-absorbed with other things such as materialism that there’s no time left for anything else. In “The Tyger” the theme revolves around the question of what the Creator (God) of this creature seems to be like and the nature of good vs. evil. Both poems arise with some problem or question which makes the reader attentive and think logically about the society.
because of the way they grew up. Blake was brought up in the city and
In “London” by William Blake the grunge, and domineering nature of a city engaged in a transformation of industry, is articulated through the setting. London of the poem, and the 1700s and 1800s, was griped by a sense of overwhelming entrapment in the mechanical comings and goings of industry. This massive shift is expressed through the stark nature of the setting, and the speaker’s awareness of a sense of confinement, and malaise in the face of great progress. Blake’s choices in the portrayal of industrialized London, is one aimed to express the overwhelming battle between machinery, and flesh in a city gripped by the throws of revolution.