William Blake's The Tyger

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William Blake's The Tyger

Terror, in the eighteenth century, was commonly considered the highest manifestation of sublimity. "Indeed," writes Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), "terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime."(1) In Section VII of his aesthetic treatise, Burke tries to explain why this is so: "Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling" (39). The chief effect of the sublime, according to Burke, is "astonishment"--"that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror," and in which "the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other" (57). These effects are produced when we contemplate dangerous objects which we know cannot harm us. Burke finds examples of this that immediately bring William Blake's poem "The Tyger" to mind: "We have continually about us animals of a strength that is considerable, but not pernicious. Amongst these we never look for the sublime: it comes upon us in the gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion, the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros" (66).

"The Tyger" is, indeed, a poem that celebrates the effects of that sublimity which Burke calls "the concomitant of terror" (66). In this aspect, the poem is reminiscent of one of Blake's Proverbs of Hell: "The roaring of lions, the howling of ...

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...lake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, British Literature: 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996) 289. back

(3) William Blake, "The Tyger," British Literature: 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996) 301. All further quotations from this poem are given parenthetically in the text by line number. back

(4) William Blake, "The Little Girl Lost," British Literature: 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996) 282. back

(5) William Blake, "The Lamb," British Literature: 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996) 278. back

(6) William Blake, "The Divine Image," British Literature: 1780-1830, ed. Anne K. Mellor and Richard E. Matlak (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1996) 280. back

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