preview

Songs Of Egoence And William Blake's Songs Of Innocence

Decent Essays
Open Document

William Blake was a poet in the late 1700s that was conventionally unorthodox in his writing. In his work “Songs of Innocence,” Blake delves into the idea that children lose their innocence because of adults, organized religion, and industrialization. In his later work, “Songs of Experience,” it parallels the ideas in “Songs of Innocence” by showing the same situations from the eyes of an adult and how their innocence is now lost through their experiences. The two works, which are now often joined as one simply titled “Songs of Innocence and of Experience,” show the difficulties of growing up in the eighteenth century and how it affected the lives of children into adulthood.
In the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment began and caused a shift in what people believed. Before the Enlightenment, organized religion like Catholicism controlled Europe, until many philosophers came up with new ideas that threatened religion itself. William Blake, although he did not believe in the concept of organized religion, condemned many Enlightenment thinkers. In “Songs of Innocence,” Blake’s poem “The Lamb” is a poem about questions that all people have, especially children. It is about a child asking questions about where they came from, who created them, and what their purpose is. In the second stanza, the answer is given that they are a child of the Lamb and are a lamb themselves. Although the poem may it first be viewed as promoting religion, deeper analysis shows that it is more about

Get Access
Related
Get Access