English Preromanticism: William Blake

In The Chimney Sweeper, William Blake uses innocent and accusatory tones to illustrate the truth and ignorance of the children’s role in society. Blake uses simplistic and allusive diction, as well as concrete imagery to convey the corruption of innocence experienced by both of the speakers in the poems. The poems reveal the injustice children felt at the hands of society and the children's blissful innocence under harsh conditions.

The Romantic Period centered on creative imagination, nature, mythology, symbolism, feelings and intuition, freedom from laws, impulsiveness, simplistic language, personal experiences, democracy, and liberty, significant in various art forms including poetry. The development of the self and self-awareness became a major theme as the Romantic Period was seen as an unpredictable release of artistic energy, new found confidence, and creative power found in the writings of the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley, who made a substantial impact on the world of poetry. Two of the Romantic poets, William Blake, and Percy Bysshe Shelley rebelled against convention and authority in search of personal, political and artistic freedom. Blake and Shelley attempted to liberate the subjugated people through the contrary state of human existence prevalent throughout their writings, including Blake’s “The Chimney Sweepers,” from “Songs of Innocence”, “London,” from “Songs of Experience” and Shelley’s A Song: “Men of England.”

“Without contraries, there is no progression.” These words of William Blake encompass his philosophy as a writer. In his work Songs of Experience, William Blake depicts human nature as fallen. Specifically, in “London” he explores the dangerous conditions of England at a time when industrialization, prostitution, poverty and child labor were prevalent. Over the course of “London,” Blake’s diction evolves from ambiguous to symbolic, ultimately illuminating the theme that the mindset of man is what oppresses him, not the social institutions in place, and in order to free himself man must break his bond with death.

The Songs of Innocence poems first appeared in Blake’s 1784 novel, An Island in the Moon. In 1788, Blake began to compile in earnest, the collection of Songs of Innocence. And by 1789, this original volume of plates was complete. These poems are the products of the human mind in a state of innocence, imagination, and joy; natural euphoric feelings uninhibited or tainted by the outside world. Following the completion of the Songs of Innocence plates, Blake wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and it is through this dilemma of good and evil and the suffering that he witnesses on the streets of London, that he begins composing Songs of Experience. This second volume serves as a response to Songs of

Blake’s two poems are both told from a child’s point of view, which is different from many works and forces adult readers to realize the fault in society’s standards through the bleak eyes of the many unfortunate children.

William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” in his Songs of Innocence is a literary masterpiece that is still relevant and impactful in the modern world. In lovely form and description, Blake explains the atrocities and hardships of the Industrial Age in a poem suitable for school-age children and with the beautiful simplicity that only a writer like Blake could produce. The Songs of Innocence is a look into the purity and wonderful outlook on life that children usually have. While in its counterpart, the Songs of Experience, Blake uses adults as protagonist. The Songs of Experience is a look at the effects that hardships and failures have on adults, therefore having a pessimistic outlook toward life. In his these two works, Blake produces a parallel universe between childhood and adulthood where the optimism of dreams of childhood and the bitterness and stagnation of adulthood never seem to know one another.

William Blake was one of several transitionary writers between the Age of Reason and the Age of Romanticism. He saw the poverty and suffering that surrounded him and was a supporter of the French Revolution in its early days. He could not accept the neoclassical idea of a stable, orderly hierarchy in the universe, but instead viewed existence as a blending of opposite poles - good and evil, innocence and experience, heaven and hell. His magnum opus Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience is the epitome of how his work embodied his beliefs.

Blake left school at the age of ten to attend the Henry Pars Drawing Academy for five years. The artists he applauded as a child included Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio, Romano and Dürer. He began writing poetry at the age of twelve and in 1783 his friends paid for his first collection of verses to be printed, which was designated “Poetical Sketches” and is now seen as a leading anapestic situation of the 18th century. Now Blake became a well-established engraver, who began to establish experimenting with printing skills. And it was not long before he assembled his first distinguished book, 'Songs of Innocence' in 1788. It was then, that Blake became determined to take his poetry above just being “words on a single paper” and perceived that they sought to be illustrated to create his desired reaction. One of Blake’s central influences was the society in which he lived. He lived during revolutionary times and observed the downfall of London during Britain’s war with France. Blake’s obsession over good and evil as well as his substantial philosophical and religious beliefs were endured throughout his lifetime and never resisted to depict them in his poetry and engravings. He died at the age of sixty-nine in 1827 and although the Blake family name died with him, his legacy as a captivating, convoluted man of many artistic talents will no doubt remain firm into this

One of the pivotal figures of the Romantic Movement was William Blake. Although an artist at first, he eventually published poems, expressing his creativity even more. In his poems and artwork, his views on society, politics, religion, and literature were exquisitely and controversially portrayed. Over the course of his life, he experienced times of turmoil and joy, with those feelings being expressed in his work. From birth to death, the one thing that remained constant was God, who Blake constantly wrote and drew about in order to get a better understanding. Despite not receiving critical acclaim in his lifetime, he has been praised since his death. Through William Blake’s life, work, and legacy, his impact on the Romantic Movement is clear and evident.

In the Neo-classical novel Candide by Voltaire the theme of innocence and experience is prevalent through the protagonist, Candide, especially through his journey of finding the prescription of how to live a useful life in the face of harsh reality. In William Blake’s collection of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience the two characters, tyger and lamb, show how we lose our innocence to gain experience. Although the innocence and experience are paradoxical terms, we can solve the paradox by analyzing these two works.

William Blake’s radical thoughts and unconventional ideals led him to a life full of ridicule by critics. However, despite being unappreciated during the eighteenth century, he was quite a brilliant man who was ahead of his time. As a man who questioned the social norms of his period, his poetry pushed the boundaries of literature. He criticized slavery, religion, and the monarchy and he even analyzed human psychology in many of his works. Some of his famous poems include “Garden of Love”, “The Tyger”, “A Poison Tree”, and “The Little Black Boy”. Each of these poems depict Blake’s strong opinions and observations of the world around him. For instance, “Garden of Love” is interpreted as a poem where Blake expresses

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

William Blake was a painter, engraver and poet of the Romantic era, who lived and worked in London. Many of Blake’s famous poems reside in his published collection of poems titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience. This collection portrays the two different states of the human soul, good and evil. Many poems in the Songs of Innocence have a counterpart poem in the Songs of Experience. The poem “A Poison Tree” is found in the Songs of Experience and it delves into the mind of man tainted with sin and corruption that comes with experience. In a simple and creative style, the religious theology of the Fall of Man is brought to life. The poem tells the story of how man fell from a state of innocence to impurity, focusing on the harmful repercussions of suppressed anger. Blake utilities many literary devices to successfully characterizes anger as an antagonist with taunting power.

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