Background Of William Blake

Ranked 38th in a BBC poll of the hundred greatest Britons, with only British poet

“The Chimney Sweeper” (128): This version of the Chimney Sweeper is very upfront and saddening. The version that is presented in the songs of innocence is much more of a calm town and is not as straightforward, while this version is very short and to the point. In this version its very deep as the narrator basically just calls out the parents/church for doing these horrible things to the children. I really love all three stanzas of this poem because they all have a really deep meaning and Blake transitions through them very well. Reading this poem over and over I don’t know what to make of it other than it is an absolute horrible situation. I think it can be tied in to

Before watching your presentation, I only knew the basics regarding William Blake. There are various interesting things that you mentioned that I did not know about. For example, you mentioned how he was more commonly known for his art rather than his poems. His art as a whole is really interesting. You mentioned how he took his encounters with the people around him, his brother’s death, and visions and reflected them into his work. One thing from that list that stood out to me the most were his visions. He was able to take his visions and portray them in his paintings even when many people found it difficult to understand the meanings behind it.

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.

“EWW!”, went the crowd when Blake fell to the ground. When Blake hit the ground, the turf did not give much at all. Furthermore, it resulted in him breaking his leg. To play on the turf, was a bad idea we all knew. Mr. Ray, athletic trainer, put his leg in a boot and gave him a pair of crutches to use. The next day Coach Topps sent a group message saying, “Guys, keep Blake in your prayers and visit him as teammates should. Because we are a family and that is what family’s do.” Not only did many go see Blake, but also many prayed for him. Although Blake continues to get better, he still has a long way to go to recovery.

Children are always portrayed in books as angelic beings that are as close to perfect as they come. Many would suggest that this is not true, that children can be just as manipulative and conniving as adults. They cry when they do not get their way and throw tantrums that are quite obscene. However, the idea of this angelic child did not com into play until the 17th century. The poets William Blake and William Wordsworth are the two poets that coined this idea of the child. In the poems of these two authors, children are portrayed as innocent and pure beings and are closer to God than adults. Although these two poets have very different views of what children are like such as their interactions with adults, their perspective on life, and their

Romanticism is described as the period across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, following The Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, that enlightened artists and philosophers developed and expressed revolutionary responses to injustices at the time. On such revolutionary was poet artist William Blake. Blake lived and wrote in England at a time when the Christian Church and Industrialisation held utmost power over people. The philosophic writer saw such values and attitudes as crimes against nature and human nature and sought to protest. William Blake, in his protesting works like Garden of Love and A Little Boy Lost, through the use of irony, sarcasm, aesthetic and metaphor, expresses concerns of corrupted 18th and 19th century Britons.

Some believe him to have been mad for his strange, idiosyncratic perspective of the world, others have considered him one of the greatest artists from Britain for it. Today, William Blake is one of the most well known British artist. Critics have held him in high reverence for his creativity and eloquence,and for the mystical and abstract aura found in his art work. But during his time, Blake had little recognition. Even so, throughout his life, Blake thought his work to be of national importance and understood by a majority of men.

William Blake, writer and artist born in 1757 was a simple unadventurous man. You may know some of his poetic pieces but his official education was in art. 10 years old Blake attended the Royal Academy of Arts School just after entering drawing school. William Blake went on to doing numerous great things like creating his own books, creating paintings, and engravings, getting married to his wife Catherine Boucher, and more. I took interest in Blake as an author because of the way he believes in his imagination and how we see the world. Imagination is about feeling and emotion, he seen the world differently, as if our humanity is bigger than our body, or how we see the world.

“From the very beginning, scholars and critics with an interest in William Blake have sought to uncover the nature and source of his religious influences. However, earlier efforts to locate a singular ‘key’ determining his thought at every juncture have now been largely abandoned. Instead we are left with a picture of a thinker who has patched together a number of different traditions and discourses” (Rix, 1). In the book, William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity Rix attempts to uncover how William Blake used his work as a platform for religion and politics. He also studies Blake’s reception of Swedenbogianism. Emanuel Swedenborg was a man who Blake took interest in, his work was a platform for radical and revolutionary politics.

Soon thereafter, Blake began to apprentice under London artist James Basire, and as a fourteen-year-old, he was assigned to drawing monuments in Westminster Abbey, which led to a lifelong admiration for Gothic art and religious illustration. While working with Basire, Blake befriended contemporary apprentice James Parker. Parker and Blake would later become partners in a jointly owned print shop on Broad Street, right next door to the Blake hosiery shop and household, a partnership that only lasted one year (1784-85).

London is a city of many faces. Through the writing of these two famed authors, William Blake and William Wordsworth, they both manage to effectively illustrate the two very different views on London. Blake shows us the dark and twisted side of London facing poverty and oppression, while Wordsworth highlights the bright, peaceful, and beautiful aspects of London. The two poets write their contrasting views by using tones, imagery, and senses; can open the reader's eyes to change and how quickly it can happen.

Many poets and artist usually write with a purpose and to bring to light certain issues. A major theme of many poets and singers throughout the years has been politics or how things are at a given time due to the polices in place or governmental structure. By doing this the authors and composers are able to express to others their feelings and make issues more known. The poet William Blake and punk rock artists The Sex Pistols both try to bring awareness and express the similar feeling of their class in society being abandoned by their government in the year they were writing their works. The poem “London” by William Blake is about the chaos and helpless situation going on in London during the french revolution in the 1790s. While “God

William Blake is one of England’s most famous literary figures. He is remembered and admired for his skill as a painter, engraver, and poet. He was born on Nov. 28, 1757 to a poor Hosier’s family living in or around London. Being of a poor family, Blake received little in the way of comfort or education while growing up. Amazingly, he did not attend school for very long and dropped out shortly after learning to read and write so that he could work in his father’s shop. The life of a hosier however was not the right path for Blake as he exhibited early on a skill for reading and drawing. Blake’s skill for reading can be seen in his understanding for and use of works such as the Bible and Greek classic literature.

William Blake was one of those 19th century figures who could have and should have been beatniks, along with Rimbaud, Verlaine, Manet, Cezanne and Whitman. He began his career as an engraver and artist, and was an apprentice to the highly original Romantic painter Henry Fuseli. In his own time he was valued as an artist, and created a set of watercolor illustrations for the Book of Job that were so wildly but subtly colored they would have looked perfectly at home in next month's issue of Wired.