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Blake as a pure poet
Features of William Blake's poetry
Features of William Blake's poetry
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Romanticism was both an artistic and intellectual movement geared essentially toward emphasizing nature’s subliminal aura, the individual’s expression of emotion and imagination, and ultimately a heightened sense of consciousness. Widely acknowledged for his contributions to Romanticism, English poet William Blake is considered to be one of the most influential poets of the nineteenth century. Blake, a visionary far beyond his years, was adamant in expressing his views on the cosmos; that one cannot simply have the good without experiencing the bad nor can one have the bad without experiencing the good. Near the end of the seventeen hundreds, Blake published two highly acclaimed works supporting his claim that in order for the world to function as it does, all things in the universe must have an opposite, or a contrast. He published his poem collection entitled “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” in 1794 and finished composing his book “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, a few years prior to it. These two brilliant works exemplify exactly just how important a positive balance in the cosmos really is. William Black depicts good and evil in his poems with the use of the reference to joy and sorrow.
The poems “Infant Joy” and “Infant Sorrow” may be companionable because both poems share the same concept, they are direct opposites. The best examples of this are the titles themselves. Within the titles one can clearly gather that the following poems will contrast each other. Just from reading the title “Infant Joy” one can presume that it will be a positive and an uplifting poem. However, reading the opposing title “Infant sorrow” one gets a negative correlation. Inside these two poems there are two perspectives; a new born baby and...
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...y.” Songs of Innocence. The Literature Network. The Literature Network, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2014.
Blake, William. “Infant Sorrow.” Songs of Experience. The Literature Network. The Literature Network, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2014.
Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Bartleby.com: Great Books Online. Bartleby.com. Web. 19 Jan. 2014.
BORUCH, MARIANNE. "Three Blakes." American Poetry Review 43.1 (2014): 41-45. Literary Reference Center. Web. 27 Jan. 2014.
Saklofske, Jon. "Remediating William Blake: Unbinding The Network Architectures Of Blake's Songs." European Romantic Review 22.3 (2011): 381-388. Literary Reference Center. Web. 27 Jan. 2014.
Williams, John. "Building A Heaven In Hell's Despair: The Everlasting Gospel Of Revolution According To William Blake And Douglas Oliver." Romanticism 18.2 (2012): 155-164. Literary Reference Center. Web. 27 Jan. 2014.
In conclusion, both poems are clear on the perspectives of innocence and the perspectives of experience and while experience lifts the veil of innocence it does not erase the raw belief that there is some place or someone who may just be better or may just be holy in a harsh world that is covered by manmade innocence.
Stanza two shows us how the baby is well looked after, yet is lacking the affection that small children need. The child experiences a ‘vague passing spasm of loss.’ The mother blocks out her child’s cries. There is a lack of contact and warmth between the pair.
Blake's poems of innocence and experience are a reflection of Heaven and Hell. The innocence in Blake's earlier poems represents the people who will get into Heaven. They do not feel the emotions of anger and jealousy Satan wants humans to feel to lure them to Hell. The poems of experience reflect those feelings. This is illustrated by comparing and contrasting A Divine Image to a portion of The Divine Image.
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. “Hell-Heaven.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 638-651. Print.
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
Natoli, Joseph. "William Blake." Critical Survey Of Poetry, Second Revised Edition (2002): 1-12. Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Jan. 2014.
Blake, William. “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period. Eighth Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. (111-120).
Bloom and Trilling, 26-27. Print. The. Blake, William. The. “Songs of Experience: To Tirzah.”
Infant Sorrow by William Blake is about the birth of a child into a dangerous world. The meaning behind this poem is that when a baby is born, they are entering a place that is unfamiliar to them and is full of hazardous circumstances and then seeks for safety and comfort by sulking on the mother's breast. Instead of blatantly telling the reader, Blake uses several poetic devices to deliver the meaning of Infant Sorrow. Some of the devices he uses are images, sound, figurative language, and the structure to bring out the meaning of his poem.
There is not much information within the poem that expresses the author’s perspective to being forced into hard child labor, and he instead uses his voice to address the problems of society through Tom Dacre. The speaker’s emotions are expressed when, “[he] could scarcely cry " 'weep! ' weep!
Throughout all of his literary works, Blake incorporates many classic romantic characteristics. But he also incorporated important people and events surrounding the time period. One of his most controversial works, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” explores three of the most prominent romantic themes in his works: the battle between good and evil, the presence of the supernatural and an affinity for nature. Most likely inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg’s “Heaven and Hell”, Blake used common romantic symbolism to demonstrate the prophetic meanings of the pieces in the book. In “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, Blake alludes to the idea that,
Both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience provide social criticism on the dangers that child chimney sweepers endure but, Songs of Experience provides better social commentary as Songs of Experience directly identifies the potential for death unlike Songs of Innocence which implicitly identifies the dangers child sweeps endure. In Songs of Innocence, the child chimney sweeper dreams that while he was “lock’d up in coffins of black…an Angel who had a bright key… open’d the coffins…set them all free” (Blake, “Innocence” 12-14). The child’s dream of freedom appears happy and optimistic when in reality it is quite chilling that the child views death as freedom. Blake presents the child chimney sweeper as optimistic to suggest that society needs to help the children find freedom so they do not wish to die. The social commentary in Songs of Innocence is implicit in order to emphasize the child’s inability to fully understand and c...
The Song of Innocence and Experience is a collection of poems written by William Blake. “Innocence” and “Experience” are two definitions of consciousness that rethink John Milton’s existential-mythic states of “Paradise” and the “Fall”, this coincides with the romantic notion that adolescence is a state of protected innocence instead of original sin and yet is still not immune to the fallen world and its institutions.
In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults are placed in opposition of one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I happy am,/ Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5) The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism. Blake’s child saw the most cheerful aspects of the natural wo...