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The aesthetics of romantic poetry
The importance of the romantic era in literature
The importance of the romantic era in literature
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During the Romantic Era, William Blake demonstrated a unique way of viewing the world, that was easily separated from the normal way of thinking. His poetry along with the ideas he expressed have influenced a countless number of individuals to see the world as it truly is: beautiful yet corrupted by oppression. William Blake lived his life in poverty, finding his only comfort within the confines of his work; therefore, there is no doubt that his poetry reflected his life and ideals. Through his childhood, obsession with art, and the the various writers he came in contact with influencing him, William Blake conveyed his questioning attitude within the many stanzas he wrote. To begin with, in Blake’s childhood, he demonstrated an immense amount …show more content…
Within line 7, Blake mentions “wings” which symbolize the greatness and powerfulness behind the act of creating (“The Tyger”). In stanza four, Blake utilizes the metaphor of a smithy by mentioning a hammer, chain, furnace and an anvil which represents creation in itself, because the tools mentioned are usually used by a smithy, who creates instruments out of hot metal (“The Tyger”). This comparison to a smithy indicates that the act of creating the tiger was intentional. A smithy makes tools, with the intention to use them or sell them later. By developing this metaphor throughout “The Tyger,” Blake indicates that the creation of the tiger accomplished the purpose of the Creator, but lead Blake to question why? Within “The Tyger,” William Blake conveys an attitude that is mixed with wonder and inquisition. From the beginning to the end, Blake asks a substantial amount of questions directed towards the tiger. Blake appears to be amazed at the very concept of creation, therefore he asks an animal if it knows anything. For this reason, the reader is sucked in, adopts the same feelings of wonder and inquisition, and stresses in order to discover the same secret Blake is striving to discover. Overall, the theme is shown through the particular questions asked by the author, Blake. “Did he smile at his work to see?/ Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” (“The Tyger”). Using a method of asking an animal, that cannot respond, a series of questions contributes to the illusion that the poem is focused around William Blake’s thought-process. He is trying to discover the secret of the tiger and the origin behind its creation through the lines of poetry he devoted time and effort to. Since all of the questions refer to who forged the tiger, the theme centers around the concept of creation itself, where Blake took on a more unique way of viewing creation; he questioned it.
William Blake was probably more concerned than any other major Romantic author with the process of publication and its implications for the interpretation of his artistic creations. He paid a price for this degree of control over the process of printing, however: Blake lived in poverty and artistic obscurity throughout his entire life. Later, when his poems began to be distributed among a wider audience, they were frequently shorn of their original contexts. For William Blake, there has been a trade-off between the size of the audience he has reached and the degree of control he exerted over the publication process.
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.
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.
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.
Both of the questions being asked by Blake in each stanza are congruent with the five worldview questions. The five worldview questions are as follows: Who is God?, Who am I?, What’s the problem?, What’s the solution?, and Where are we going?. Furthermore, throughout the entire poem, each stanza asks a worldview question. So when Blake asks certain questions about the Tiger such as “What the hand, dare seize the fire?” (Blake 1) he is actually asking the reader; moreover, each question questions the reader’s thinking of religion. This consequently ties in with the major theme of the poem which is
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.
In "The Tyger," William Blake takes the inverse position he did in "The Lamb." In "The Tyger," Blake shows the God has made a kind of fiendishness animal in the tiger. Blake contrasts God with a metal forger when he made the tiger. He does this by utilizing lines like "What the sledge," "What the chain," "In what heater was thy cerebrum," What the anvil"(blake 539). By posing these questions Blake reveals to us that God must have been a smithy in view of the utilization of words like iron block, mallet and heater. These are all things that metalworkers utilization. The tiger is a rough stalker of his prey and by definition a metal forger is a brutal calling. At the point when Blake says "what godlike hand or eye Could outline thy dreadful symmetry" (Blake 538), he is alluding to God. Blake is considering how some undying thing could make a brute like the tiger. As indicated by Blake this animal has an unique "internal" wellspring of vitality which recognizes its presence from the icy and dim universe of soulless things (Blake 3). There...
In William Blake’s poems, “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” and “Infant Sorrows,” there is something very blatantly wrong with society. William Blake wrote all of these poems to change society. We’ve seen this when studying many other authors. A very common way to make a change in society is to write poems or stories that make people feel sympathy for the ones who are being oppressed or mistreated. Some do it through satire. Others, like Blake, just write simple poems which clearly criticize society. William Blake saw problems in his society, and used his skills, as a writer, to influence the way people looked at society.
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.
William Blake’s 1793 poem “The Tyger” has many interpretations, but its main purpose is to question God as a creator. Its poetic techniques generate a vivid picture that encourages the reader to see the Tyger as a horrifying and terrible being. The speaker addresses the question of whether or not the same God who made the lamb, a gentle creature, could have also formed the Tyger and all its darkness. This issue is addressed through many poetic devices including rhyme, repetition, allusion, and symbolism, all of which show up throughout the poem and are combined to create a strong image of the Tyger and a less than thorough interpretation of its maker.
Similar to common nursery rhymes, Blake uses musical devices in both “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” which brings an awareness of potential evil and how it dominates over innocence by exercising specific language in both related poems. For example, Blake uses alliteration in “The Lamb” by repeating “Little Lamb” several times during the poem to grasp the reader’s attention. Along with alliteration, Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” both capture the reader’s attention by using rhyme scheme. For example, Blake’s use of couplets in both of the related poems potentially brings an awareness of how evil dominates over innocence. Blake utilizes the couplet series in his poem “The Tyger” and proves his theme by comparing and contrasting the tyger and the lamb and even bravely asks if the same Creator who created the innocent little lamb also created the potentially evil tyger
Blake is saying to the lamb, I'll tell you who made you, and it is
For the poem the Tyger, is quite the opposite of its counter poem the Lamb. In this work the narrator gives the reader the feeling of great doubts that the creator even has goodness with in. This is created throughout the poem, by asking "what" instead of asking "who". By doing this it asks how the creator could make the first tiger as an inhuman creation. There is alliteration within the poem such as" Ty...
In William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” seems to focus on having one 's reasons overwhelmed by the beauty and horror of the natural world, but it also includes religion and creation. In the beginning the tyger is being questioned about his creation, and who created him, “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry (line 3-4). This quote is more or less asking, “who created you and why did they create you?”. A vital contrast is made throughout the poem of good and evil; beauty and horror, the tyger is said to possess both
...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.