The Lamb and The Tyger by William Blake

William Blake, a unique poet of the literary canon, is one of the most critiqued poets of all time. Having a rather unique stylistic approach to topics, especially religion, Blake seems to contradict himself in his own writing and, therefore, sparks questions in the readers’ minds on specific subjects. Two of his poems in particular have been widely critiqued and viewed in various lights. “The Tyger,” written in 1774, and “The Lamb,” written five years later in 1789, are considered companion poems due to their similar humanistic topic and stark differences of each other. Through the use of specific titillation and use of rhetorical questioning, Blake sets up an ultimatum between the two poems, creating the illusion that each creature in the poems may have different creators. In this way, Blake questions traditional Christian doctrine in such a way that initiates curiosity of the identity of the creator, or creators, and the nature of each; thus, the reader is opened up to a more broad pattern of thought.

“The Lamb” and “The Tyger” were originally collected into two separate collections of poems in one volume of work called “The Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” Identified with “the contrasting and complementary natures of youth and maturity", as stated in Steven Clark's review, “Songs of Innocence and Experience (Book)” (256), each collection of poems showed a large spectrum that ranged from a trusting nature, such as that of a child, to a more experienced standpoint, such as that of an adult. Despite being considered two separate collections, “The Songs of Innocence” would commonly have a corresponding companion poem in “The Songs of Experience” (Robert Evans, “Literary Contexts in Poetry: William Blake's “The Tyger”). “T...

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