AN ANALYSIS OF WILLIAM BLAKE’S SONGS OF
INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE AS A RESPONSE TO
THE COLLAPSE OF VALUES
TIMOTHY VINES∗
Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience are a much studied part of the
English canon, and for good reason. Blake’s work depicts a quandary that continues to haunt humanity today: the struggle of high-order humanity against the ‘real’ rationality and morals of institutionalised society. This essay seeks to explore both Blake’s literary reaction to the Enlightenment and the response of early readers to his work.
Showing more than ‘the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’,1 Blake’s
Songs of Innocence and Experience reveals a symbolic development which existed in opposition to conventional concepts of modernity and
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Experience was born out of the political troubles – both in England and abroad – which, to Blake, exemplified the struggle of spirit against oppression.
A Malcolmson (ed.), William Blake: an introduction, Constable Young Books Ltd, London, 1967.
His enemies and critics equated Blake ‘with religious fanatics like Joanna Southcote and lunatics like Richard
Brothers.’ D Dorfman, Blake in the nineteenth century: His reputation as a poet from Gilchrist to Yeats, Yale University Press,
New Haven, 1969, p. 16.
5 Blake’s method of engraving was as ingenious and novel as his style of writing. According to Blake, his brother
Robert, who died in early 1787, visited him in a dream and told him the correct method to engrave his poems. See
Malcolmson.
6 See Blake’s colour plates in Keynes’ reproduction.
7 To avoid repetition the individual volumes of Songs of Innocence and of Experience will be cited as Innocence and
Experience respectively.
8 G Keynes, in Blake, p. xiv.
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An Analysis of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience – Timothy Vines
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Nonetheless it would be inappropriate to read the two collections in isolation.
Blake published both Songs in one volume and the thematic development and harmony between the volumes and individual poems supports an interpretation which treats both Songs as contrasting elements of a single discourse. Similarities
print making skills helped other artists be good and show others to do art. He died
Albert first became familiar with the identification of forms of writing and types of inks when he was raised on a farm and found that it just wasn’t for him. He attended the State College in Lansing and became interested in penmanship. Later he was offered a job teaching at Rochester Business Institute in 1882, where when he became a highly qualified teacher, lawyers began submitting documents to him. By 1920, business had grown so much that he had to leave Rochester. He went to New York City and opened an office
The thing that was most unusual when they found John Singleton Copley letters was that he seemed to be a well educated man. Peter Pelham, his step father, educated him not only what he would've learned in school but he also taught him art. Peter taught him how to use paintbrushes and engraving tools. People were impressed by John Singleton Copley's hand in art because he was very good for a beginner just learning. " Copley at the age of fifteen was able to engrave in mezzotint; his step father Pelham, with whom he lived three years, was an excellent engraver and skillful also with a brush.-Whitmore" The family tree continues with John Singleton Copley's half brother.
William opened his own engraving shop in London. Here, he was making tools for bookbinders as well as. As he created tools and engraved, a printer asked him to engrave type punches. John Watts had William engraving type that would be used in London (Ball 123). He engraved by using his hands to cut the punches. There was very little error in the work that William was doing while engraving typography. According the Macmillan, “It was his skill as an engraver that
During this time William Blake voiced his opinion against “oppressive institutions like the church or the monarchy, or any and all cultural traditions-sexist, racists, or classist-which stifled imagination or passion” (The Tyger). Many scholars viewed “The Tyger” as a dangerous piece because dances with religious dogma. However, this poem is one of Blake’s many mirroring pieces of work. He wrote this poem in conjunction with his other poem called, “The Lamb.” “The Tyger” was written for Blake’s poetry collection called Songs of Experience.
This is due to the use of a tool, a burin, to create extremely thin and subtle lines in an engraving. The medium used for an engraving is metal and is created using an intaglio method. Unlike the relief process of printmaking, this process is a positive one. The artist scratches the image onto the metal plate, inks the surface of it, and wipes it clean. As a result, ink is placed into the carved out drawing.
The English mystical poet and artist created a series of monotypes on Isaac Newton, a rational thinker whose theories he opposed. Blake believed in spiritual visions while Newton, as a scientist, saw God as distant and less significant to scientific discoveries. This paper will explore Blake's manner and style in expressing his strong feelings about Enlightenment thinkers and scientists, using dramatic imagery of Newton as subject to illustrate Blake's
Simple, limited, and unadventurous all describe William Blake’s life (Greenblatt, Abrams, Lynch, Stillinger). Blake was born November 28, 1757 in London, England and his artistic ability became evident in his early years. Blake had a very simple upbringing and had little education. His formal education was in art and at the age of fourteen he entered an apprenticeship with a well-known engraver who taught Blake his skills in engraving. In Blake’s free time, he began reading writing poetry.
As a forerunner to the free-love movement, late eighteenth century poet, engraver, and artist, William Blake (1757-1827), has clear sexual overtones in many of his poems, and he layers his work with sexual double entendres and symbolism. Within the discussion of sexuality in his work Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake seems to take a complicated view of women. His speakers use constructs of contraries, specifically innocence/ experience and male/female. Of the latter sex, he experiments with the passive (dependent, docile, virtuous) and active (independent, evil, a threat to the masculine) female subjects. Blake’s use of personification specifically of nature and botany suggest the use of nature to discuss human society. In Songs
using water colors and oils, and did excellent pen and ink drawings. He began to make a name for
When Irving was thirty-six years old, the simultaneous publications of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819), in
During the Romantic Period, poets believed themselves to be very politically aware and important. William Blake and Charlotte Smith are those amongst those Romantic Poets who took it upon themselves to educate the public on the events of the time; particularly the established Church, the Industrial Revolution and the Slave Trade in Haiti: ‘[Poetry] speaks to a divided society in an attempt to constitute its readers as citizens of what [Geoffrey] Hill calls… the just kingdom… and the commonwealth’.
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience are contrasting views of the same events. Each contains a collection of poems that profile an idea, figure, or event. In Songs of Innocence the world is viewed through the Eyes of someone like a child, who has little life experience. In Songs of Experience the same world is looked at only this time from the standpoint of someone who has experience in life, most likely an adult. The major difference between the two viewpoints is the understanding for life and
The first stanzas of both poems establish that the children have been forsaken by their parents and were left in the role of a chimney sweeper. The Innocence poem’s rhyme scheme consists of two couplets per quatrain. The couplets create a sound similar to nursery rhymes (which often mask dark events, like the Black plague). The Experience poem begins with rhyming couplets in a quatrain, but switches to ABAB rhymes in the second stanza. Some of the end rhymes are just barely off, which causes a slight feeling of uneasiness.
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. He was not recognized during his lifetime and now is considered as a seminal figure and criticised over the twentieth and even this century. Blake’s strong philosophical and religious beliefs in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Although he was from London he spent his entire life in Felpham.