William Blake Research Paper

560 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How does william wordsworth and his works tie into the characteristics of the romanticism

William Blake, a romantic poet whose characteristics of romanticism are intensely marked on his poetry. So, what exactly is Romanticism? Romanticism is "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form." (Morner). Romanticism is characterized by the dependance on the imagination and subjectivity of approach, freedom of thought and expression, and an idealization of nature. Romanticism officially began by the Lyrical Ballads combinedly written by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1830 as said in the introduction of the romantic period (Greenblatt). Many of the writers of the Romantic period were very influenced by the war between England and France and the French Revolution. In the middle of all these changes, Blake was also motivated to write against these ideas. In spite of most people, Blake thought that his spiritual life was varied, free, and dramatic. Blake’s poetry presents many characteristics of the romantic spirit. The romanticism of Blake consists of the importance of imagination,his symbolism, his love of liberty, his humanitarian sympathies, his idealization of childhood, the …show more content…

Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own” (Blake, 123) The child is the symbol of the most fragile and brave components in the human mind. The characteristics of Romanticism are shown in his poems, for example the sense of wonder and the contemplation of Nature through fresh eyes. Everything that a child sees is mystery and beauty and goodness. The words in these poems fit the thought because he poems are simple. The “Songs of Innocence” most completely covers the definition of Romanticism. In this book, Blake deals with themes of experience and innocence, and on bigger Romantic themes is nature, the body, and sublime. The world of Nature and man full of love and beauty and innocence enjoyed by a happy child. In spite of his powerful emotions and his rare ideas, Blake keeps his structure perfectly clear and

Show More
Related

  • Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood

    370 Words  | 1 Pages

    Romanticism is a revolt against rationalism. The poets and authors of this time wrote about God, religion, and Beauty in nature. The romantics held a conviction that imagination and emotion are superior to reason. One such author is William Cullen Bryant, he wrote the poem Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood. This poem uses many literary devices, and has a strong message to portray to the reader.

    Read More

  • Anaysis of William Blake's The Lamb, The Tyger, and Proverbs of Hell

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Blake, 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. Romanticism is a movement that developed during the 18th and early 19th century as a reaction against the Restoration and Enlightenment periods focusing on logic and reason.

    Read More

  • Rebellion As Art By William Blake

    2117 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • American Romanticism By Washington Irving And James Fenimore Cooper

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    When many hear “Romanticism” they think of love, but Romanticism isn’t mainly about love. Yes, it may have some love, but it’s also about reasoning, nature, imaginations, and individualism. Like American Romanticism, that occurred from 1830 – 1865. It was actually caused by Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. For Americans, “it was a time of excitement over human possibilities, and of individual ego. American writers didn’t know what “America” could possibly mean in terms of literature, which was American and not British. It questioned their identity and place in society, creatively” (Woodlief). It was characterized by an interest in nature, and the significance of the individual’s expression on emotion and imagination; good literature should have heart, not rules. Some of the most famous authors who wrote during American Romanticism were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Romanticism is important because it was the “historical period of literature in which modern readers most began to see their selves and their own conflicts and desires”. Romanticism was a literary revolution.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of William Blake's Song Of Innocence And Songs Of Experience

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    Blake was able to unite the central themes of the Romantic period: childhood and the impact

    Read More

  • Literature and the Industrial Revolution

    349 Words  | 1 Pages

    London? and ? The Lamb? William Wordsworth, like Blake, was linked with Romanticism. In fact, he was one of the very founders of Romanticism. He wrote poems are about nature, freedom and emotion.

    Read More

  • Introduction to Romanticism

    1644 Words  | 4 Pages

    However, we will call this American romanticism, though it shares many characteristics with British romanticism. It flourished in the glow of Wordsworth's poetic encounter with nature and himself in The Prelude, Coleridge's literary theories about the reconciliation of opposites, the romantic posturings and irony of Byron, the lush imagery of Keats, and the transcendental lyricism of Shelley, even the Gothicism of Mary Shelley and the Bronte sisters. Growing from the rhetoric of salvation, guilt, and providential visions of Puritanism, the wilderness reaches of this continent, and the fiery rhetoric of freedom and equality, though, the American brand of romanticism developed its own character, especially as these writers tried self-consciously to be new and original.

    Read More

  • How Did William Blake's Life Affected His Work?

    609 Words  | 2 Pages

    Blake was born on November 28, 1757 and died on August 12, 1827. He grew up during the Romantic Age, a time where poetry and art were based on individual thought and personal feeling. Blake was considered one of the greatest poets of the Romantic Age, and was one of the first poets to start it. In 1793, Blake stated, “a new heaven is begun”, marking the beginning of the Romantic age. Throughout April 19, 1775 to September 3, 1783, Great Britain was at war with The Thirteen Colonies. Blake at the time was living near London, the heart of Great Britain. Blake had many poems and paintings inspired by The Revolutionary War, including America, A Prophecy. In addition to events like the war, Blake’s

    Read More

  • Close critical analysis of Coleridges Frost at Midnight

    1692 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...the imagination, whereby ordinary things are presented to the mind in an unusual way" (Wolfson and Manning, 2003, p. 356). Finally, in the course of contrasting his own childhood with the upbringing he imagines for his child, the speaker makes a typically Romantic connection between the natural and the supernatural worlds. This is perhaps the key concern of the poem as it is explored and related to the Romantic belief that nature is the best teacher. On this point Abrams's elemental understanding of Romantic poetry seems insufficient. However, this is perhaps significant in highlighting the difficulties involved in defining Romanticism as a coherent literary movement.

    Read More

  • Human Innocent in William Blake's Poems The Lamb, and The Tyger

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    Because of Blake’s support of Rousseau’s noble savage, his poetry is somewhat anti-Enlightenment, a characteristic of Romanticism. Another Romantic ideal was the beauty of the natural world, which opposed the Enlightened thinkers of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, Blake’s usage of a child, who is speaking to animals that are unable to respond, demonstrates the Romantic belief in the “importance of feelings and imagination over reason” (Romanticism 699). William Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” are excellent examples of Romantic literature that supports Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s myth of the noble savage.

    Read More

  • Key Romantic Themes In William Blake's Songs Of Innocence And Experience Anthology

    1525 Words  | 4 Pages

    Elizabeth Mill?n-Zaibert states that German poet Friedrich Schlegel first used the term Romantic to describe literature, defining it as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form. (Millan-Zaibert) However this is not the complete picture, romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules, mysticism and infinity with nature. Some critics such as Josephine Miles place Blake as a pre Romantic poet. (Miles 1967) Others, such as Stephanie Forward place him as a romantic poet. (http://www.bl.uk) It is therefore fair to suggest that Blake was an early romantic poet and incorporated some of the themes seen in Romantic poetry into his own work. For the purpose of this essay the following themes will be used, natural instinct, visionary, morality, mysticism and childhood. Where possible, comparisons will be made to other Romantic poets who explored these themes

    Read More

  • Imagination in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner versus Kubla Khan

    968 Words  | 2 Pages

    To the Romantics, the imagination was important. It was the core and foundation of everything they thought about, believed in, and even they way they perceived God itself. The leaders of the Romantic Movement were undoubtedly Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his close friend, William Wordsworth. Both were poets, and both wrote about the imagination. Wordsworth usually wrote about those close to nature, and therefore, in the minds of the Romantics, deeper into the imagination than the ordinary man. Coleridge, however, was to write about the supernatural, how nature extended past the depth of the rational mind.

    Read More

  • Critical Appreciation of William Blake's London

    1170 Words  | 3 Pages

    William Blake who lived in the latter half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century was a poet, a philosopher, a radical, an artist, and a great thinker; who was able to bring about "remarkable results with the simplest of means" in all of his work. He wrote his poems with deep personal emotions but if we look further and ignore the prophetic qualities we discover a further intended meanings of a strong political and social level. He was a critic of his own era but his poetry also strikes a chord in ours. He was one of several poets of the time who restored emotion and feelings into poetry, and so was one of the first "romantics." Blake lived during a period of intense social changes, the industrial revolution, the French revolution and the American revolution all happened during his lifetime. Blake was witness to the transformation of a agricultural society to an industrial society, which is where the basis for some of his poems stand.

    Read More

  • Sociological Criticism on William Blake’s Poetry

    1509 Words  | 4 Pages

    LaGuardia, Cheryl. "WILLIAM BLAKE: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE." Library Journal 128.9 (2003): 140. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 July 2011.

    Read More

  • The Tyger Poem Review and Analysis

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Blake, one of the infamous English romantic poets, is most known for his romantic views on conventional scenes and objects, which were presented in his works The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. The first collection was published in 1789, and addresses subjects such as suffering and death from the innocent and optimistic perspective of a child. The later collection addresses these same issues, but is told from the perspective of an experienced bard. The poems contained in The Songs of Innocence often have a counter part in the second collection that reflects a darker or more corrupted take on the same subject. For example, the purity presented in the creation of “The Lamb” is dramatically contrasted with its shameful counterpart “The Tyger”.

    Read More

More about William Blake Research Paper

Open Document