The Use Of Vistence In William Blake's Song Of Innocence

Blake has another meaning to ‘Innocence’; He refers innocence to ignorance. This means that innocence is corrupted and full of naivety. It is the ignorance of corruption, of the real

William Blake is an English poet, painter, and printmaker from the eighteenth century. With his unique way with words and mastery craftsmanship, he created an illustration collection of poems called Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1789. His most famous poems from Songs of Innocence and Experience are “The Lamb and The Tyger”. These poems use animals to attest to God’s role as the Creator, yet they possess contrasting tones and language of the speaker and present conflicting views of God’s power and ability. “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” called me to ask questions of myself, my beliefs, and how my beliefs shape my worldview.

Just like the “lamb” that was born into this world through a virgin and was sacrificed for all mankind, this same “lamb” made us and called us by his name. In his poem "The Lamb," William Blake clearly uses repetition, personification, and symbolism to describe his religious beliefs and how a pure sacrifice is portrayed by a little lamb. Laura Quinney’s book, “William Blake on Self and Soul,” shows the religious side of Blake when it says, “Blake makes this argument in his address “To the Deists,” where he insists “Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan” (Quinney, 2009). Blake uses his religious view to show us he believes that our creator is the Lamb of God. He distinctively uses the innocence and purity of a little lamb and how its creator clearly takes care of it. The lamb is fed, given water by the stream and a bidden a blessed life.

Everything in the universe has an opposite. This provides a balance, a push and pull, to the world. Because of this truth, no thing that exists is entirely one thing or the other. Every animal, object, and event that has ever existed may have had bad effects in one situation, but good effects for another situation. And every human, by extension, has aspects about them that can be viewed as both good and evil. In his poems, “The Tyger” and, “The Lamb”, author William Blake explores the ideas of duality, and how each thing must have an equal opposite. He uses both these poems to further ruminate on this dichotomy and brings up many questions in the context of religion. He seeks to point out that in the Christian belief system, all things viewed as good and bad in the world have apparently come from the same thing: God, and yet God is seen as being entirely good. But if that is the case, then how can God be all good if all the evil things come from him as well? Is anything then truly evil? Or does it just seem that way from one perspective? Blake uses these two poems in conjunction with one another to make the reader question these things and think about what good and evil actually mean.

“The Lamb” in Songs of Innocence, and “The Tyger” in Songs of Experience were written with biblical influence, and Blake demonstrates his biblical upbringing through out these poems. “The Lamb” is represented through a pastoral story line, allowing a connection with agriculture and nature, much like many stories in the Bible. “The Tyger’s” storyline, however introduces the question of theodicy, or why there is evil in the world. How can God make a lamb so innocent and pure, and in turn create something so evil and cruel? Throughout “The Tyger”, Blake asks hypothetical questions,

The coexistence of good and evil has caused many people throughout time to question their God and the way the world is. William Blake’s compilation of poems called the Songs of Innocence and Experience questions the good and evil in the daily lives of human beings. This collection of poems includes The Tyger, a partnered poem in the series with The Lamb. Blake offers a new way of interpreting God through His creations in The Tyger. Blake demonstrates the fierceness of the tyger’s creator throughout the poem. The tyger is viewed as a vicious creature that people view as a threat to their lives in many cases. A creature so evil to be created by a God depicted as loving baffles many people, Blake included it would seem.

William Blake uses the children in both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience to represent the effects of the by-products left by a society dominated by the concept of providing for an upper class through the notions associated with proto-capitalism. This essay will highlight the various ways in how Blake presents both the physical and psychological effects caused by these by-products (poverty and suffering) to these children and how they as a whole represent this side of society that is affected therefore as a result conveying the ways in which Blake represents poverty and suffering in both of his books.

Being one of the most influential poets during the Romantic Period, the religious status of Blake has long been as controversial as his own literary works. Nonetheless, the fact that he is indeed a Christian is doubtless - such can be easily illustrated from many fragments of his works such as ‘I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God Bless thee! Little Lamb, God Bless thee!’ from his poem The Lamb. This singsongy excerpt from the Song of Innocence not only appears to readers as Blake’s direct praises of God but also an evident reference to ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’(Eg. Psalm 23) from the Holy Bible. However, it can also be easily argued that Blake is not an ordinary, churchgoing Christian. A great portion

Following this, “The Little Boy Lost” represents the human spirit, seeking God in a sinful world that inquires to hide the signs of His existence. The little boy say, “Father, father, / where are you going? / O do not walk so fast! / Speak, father, speak to your little boy, / Or else I shall be lost’”

“The Lamb” by William Blake brings about spiritual passions and the emotional about the Lamb of God, who is Jesus Christ. “The Lamb” by William Blake is a lyric poem in which the author marvels at the love, wonder and innocents of child poetry, also which states personal passions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.”1 In select “The Lamb “it was talking to me intellect emotion, imagination and internally. In our lesson, category “The lamb is a symbol of innocence also, a character of Christ’s sacrifice by sin.”2 Blake stated in the poem “for he calls himself a lamb”: He is meek, and he is mild describes the Lord Jesus Christ as the creator of the lamb. Since Jesus is often called the ‘Lamb of God, the representation of the instinctive chosen in the poem is very recognizable. Reading the poem as a Christian it can point to word of God’s in a biblical point of view. “Sometimes a lamb is just a lamb, unless it's the "Lamb of God," Or unless it's the human lambs being shepherded by Jesus Christ.3 “Christianity turns everyone in this poem into a lamb; also the poem's symbolic, religious meaning comes through in the second stanza, where the lamb's creator is revealed to be Jesus Christ.”4 In line one “Who made thee”, (John 1:3), when God created he make something from nothing. Analysis the poem it gives the urge to answer the question in the sonnet. Because we are created a being, we have no basis for pride. Reminded that you exist, because God made us, and

The Romantic Period contained an overabundance of body hating in the orthodox Christian mentality. William Blake had apathy for organized religion because of how restrictive it was. Orthodox Christianity impacts social and sexual issues, prevalent in sonnets: My Pretty Rose Tree, The Sick Rose, The Garden of Love, Ah! Sun-flower and A Poison Tree. All these sonnets are from the experience section of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Each share common features of faltering innocence, experience and deception. By comparing these sonnets, it is apparent nature is a metaphor for a religion which is at the pinnacle of social and sexual issues. Blake’s quote links to the idea that nature indicates growth as a general idea, from innocence to experience; “as the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell l.16-17)

Critics of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience not surprisingly have focused their attention on the galaxy of characters whose voices are heard throughout Blake’s poems. Along with the cacophony of voices of London’s disenfranchised—the men, women and children, the chimney sweeper or the harlot who thronged London’s streets and whose piteous cries became the object of Blake’s concern, the two set of artistic manifestation portray a seamless blending between innocence, a gradual loss of innocence and finally a metamorphosis into a higher state of innocence. In addition to the spoken voices there runs throughout the Songs an undercurrent of silent voices—voices that can be inferred, or as Blake would say, imagined—which speaks no

Religion has been present in the world for as long as man himself. People believe that natural occurrences could only be the work of higher beings. Multiple religions have different gods, traditions, and ceremonies, but they all have one thing in common; people take different viewpoints of a religion to fit into their mindset. William Blake uses this idea to express how he believes people see Christianity and God. In his series named “The Songs of Innocence and Experience,” Blake creates the image of opposing views of similar situations. The poems show the views of the innocent and the experienced. The innocent takes on the roles to show how naivety and children have a joyful and bright look on moments in life. The experienced poems,

Over time, man Christians who have a firm foundation in the Bible begin to develop and express their own theories. William Blake was one of these people. While he wrote many things, the poems “the Divine Image” and “the Human Abstract” from his books Songs of Innocence and of Experience hit on a deeper level inside of Christianity. When reading the works of others it is important to know what the actual gospel truth is and then what the poet’s truth is. These lines are blurred in these two poems. If a Christian is able to distinguish the God spoken truth from Blake’s own belief’s then these poems provide the reader with a short pastoral message on God and who people are. When properly read and cross-referenced with the Bible, these two poems can provide both comfort and guidance, as well as a warning, to its Christian readers.

(More background on Blake here and how he came up with innocence/experience) (https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/jkr/romanticism.html) Romanticism was a literary movement that swept through virtually every country of Europe, the United States, and Latin America that lasted from about 1750 to 1870. This period included philosophy, art, music, literature. (https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics) Romantics believed that men and women should not be guided by rules placed on them by society but led by warm emotions that promoted a sense of freedom. William Blake was one of the poets that began the Romantic Age who promoted self-expression but was weighed down by the importance and standards of religion. Literary work during Romanticism had a strong emphasis in implementing nature, emotion over logic, imagination over reason, and no division between art and literature. These works placed focus on human personality affected by political and social causes. These became dominant themes in romantic poetry which made literature much more complex. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, child labor in England was prominent after the Great Fire of London in 1666. After this massive fire in London, chimneys had to be built slimmer due to new regulations to keep the city safer. Chimney sweeping was done by poor boys at ages as young as four after they were sold.