Download William Blake: Introduction

William Blake: Introduction
Blake, William (1757-1827), English poet, painter, and engraver, who created a unique form of illustrated verse; his poetry,
inspired by mystical vision, is among the most original, lyric, and prophetic in the language. Blake was born in London.
Following his apprenticeship to an engraver, in 1784 he set up a printshop. For the rest of his life Blake eked out a living as
an engraver and illustrator, aided by his wife.
Blake's most popular poems are Songs of Innocence (1789), eloquent lyrics that make fresh, direct observations. In 1794,
disillusioned with the possibility of human perfection, Blake issued Songs of Experience. Both series of poems take on
deeper resonances when read in conjunction. Innocence and Experience, "the two contrary states of the human soul," are
contrasted in such companion pieces as "The Lamb" and "The Tyger." Blake's subsequent poetry develops the implication
that true innocence is impossible without experience, transformed by the creative force of the imagination.
Blake illustrated the Songs and other works with designs that demand an imaginative reading of the dialogue between word
and picture. Blake most likely created his illustrations by writing the words and drawing the pictures for each poem on a
copper plate, using some liquid impervious to acid, which when applied, left text and illustration in relief. Ink or a color wash
was then applied, and the printed picture was finished by hand in watercolours.
Blake created a complex personal mythology and invented his own symbolic characters to reflect his nonconformist radical
social and political concerns. Poems such as The French Revolution (1791) condemn 18th-century political and social
tyranny. Theological tyranny is the subject of The Book of Urizen (1794). Among the Prophetic Books is a prose work, The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-1793), which develops Blake's idea that "without Contraries is no progression.". –
Encarta
Songs of Innocence, General Questions:
1. What do you consider to be the task or purpose of Songs of Innocence? In other words, do the songs teach us anything?
If so, what?
2. How is the title phrase "songs of innocence" capable of more than one interpretation?
3. Are adult limitations in understanding different in kind from a child's limitations? What bounds the perceptions of an
adult? What bounds the perceptions of a child?
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"The Lamb"
1. How are the child-speaker, the lamb, and Christ "the Lamb" set in relation to one another? Why is it so easy for the child
to identify the lamb's creator, and so easy to invoke God's blessing on the lamb?
"The Chimney Sweeper"
1. What is the speech situation in this poem (i.e., who is speaking to whom or what)? Is the speech situation
consistent through the whole poem?
2. What is the poem's tone? – i.e., (a) what is the poem's attitude towards the use of children for sweeping
chimneys? and (b) what is the poem's attitude towards the boys?
3. How does the poem's use of metre, rhyme, and figurative language help you answer questions 1 and 2?
4. According to the poem, who or what is to blame for the sweeps' situation?
Songs of Experience
"Chimney Sweeper"
1. What is the speech situation in this poem (who is speaking to whom or what)? Is the speech situation
consistent through the whole poem?
2. What is the poem's tone? – i.e., (a) what is the poem's attitude towards the use of children for sweeping
chimneys? and (b) what is the poem's attitude towards the boy?
3. How does the poem's use of metre, rhyme, and figurative language help you answer questions 1 and 2?
4. Do the two ‘Chimney Sweeper” poems suggest that it is better for a child to be innocent or experienced?
Explain.
5. What is the logic of the child's statement that his parents, their conception of God, and that God's Priest and King "make
up a heaven of our misery"? How can they all "make up" a heaven from the existence of misery?
"The Fly"
1. Is the speaker's identification with the fly a healthy one?
2. What power does the speaker attribute to "thought"? Is the attribution or perspective convincing?
"The Tyger"
1. What emotional progression does the poem imply in the speaker's contemplation of the Tyger?
2. What is the answer to the question in line 20, "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" Why does the speaker need to
ask the question? Who is "he," i.e. the lamb's creator?
3. What is the significance of the poem's references to "fire," "burning," and the "furnace"? What does fire often symbolize?
4. What effect does the odd spelling "tyger" create?
"London"
1. Why is the reference to prostitution the most significant one to the speaker, as we see from the last stanza?
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