The Songs Of Innocence And Experience William Blake Analysis

The poet, painter and engraver, William Blake was born in 1757, to a London haberdasher. Blake’s only formal education was in art. At the age of ten, he entered a drawing school and then at the age of fourteen, he apprenticed to an engraver. ( Abrams & Stillinger 18). Although, much of Blake’s time was spent studying art, he enjoyed reading and soon began to write poetry. Blake’s first book of poems, Poetical Sketches, "showed his dissatisfaction with the reigning poetic tradition and his restless quest for new forms and techniques" ( Abrams & Stillinger 19). Poetical Sketches, was followed by many other works including, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. These series were accompanied by etchings, which depict

Reading poems can be very intriguing but difficult at the same time, especially reading poems of William Blake. Blake wrote a poem called “The Land of Dreams”. William Blake has many other poems that can contribute to being a part of the songs of innocence and experience. When it comes to “The Land of Dreams” it is hard to actually put it in a category with experience and innocence. For some reason, this poem can be put into both categories of experience and innocence. They way Blake starts off his poem and the way it ends can give you an idea that it can be both innocence and experience. Also, Blake has many other poems that can contribute to whether “The Land of Dreams” is a part of the songs of innocence or the songs of experience. Two

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

Blake chose to use a children’s song, similar to many nursery rhymes, to explain a theological matter, in terms that even a child can understand. He begins by asking the age old question: “Who made thee?” This initiates the thought process in the reader, causing the reader to begin to ponder this same question, even if he or she is not conscious of it. He continues to describe all of the many blessing and provisions the lamb has. This again causes the reader to look introspectively at his or her own blessings and provisions.

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

On January 1st, 2017, a gang held an alleyway waiting for people to come through so they and take their money. The alley was very dark. People came through the alley at nights and trashed the alley, cracking windows, leaving cigarettes on the dirty spray-painted ground littered with sharp shards of glass from a broken window. Their leader, Kole Blazer, was there in the rooftops, waiting for someone to come through, when he saw someone betray his gang: Mike Blazer, his brother. Kole was taller than him by only a few inches. He had brown hair, freckles, blue eyes, more muscular than his brother who was always the weaker one, but they were twins and he wanted to keep a secret. His brother betrayed them and now it’s time for payback.

Blake had written many poems, but the four I will be discussing are rather unique because of the fact that each one of these poems is a symbol of innocence or experience. The four poems I am referring to is The Lamb, The Tyger, The Chimney Sweeper, and Infant Sorrow. Through my study I had to determined the two poems that were Innocent and the two that were a symbol of experience. Blake's views were on point in my opinion he shows the right balance between innocence and experience. Blake has this view that everything starts off innocent and within time we all gain experience which makes us turn from lambs to tigers. The question is however do we decide if we are more like a lamb or a tiger and in time I do believe we find the answer to that question.

The style of Songs of Innocence and Experience is simply direct, but the rhythms and language are often deeply complex. Many of the poems are narratives, but some like, “The Sick Rose” use symbolism and abstract concepts to deliver a message. Blake often uses Biblical symbolism and language in his writing. He seems to enjoy applying simple, nursery rhyme meter to his unorthodox conceptions. This combination of familiarity with the unfamiliar is what keeps Blake’s work perpetually interesting (Erdman, David V. Complete Poetry and Prose. New York, 1982.

The Bible has, for the longest time been affiliated with the moral and eternal wellbeing of mankind. This universal view of benevolence and piety deems it the holiest of texts and is reaffirmed by the fact that it is also the most read book today. Its position in society alone marks this text as the perfect connection to society. Therefore, by using the Bible as a platform for a poem, Gwynn guarantee’s himself the attention of all pious readers. He channels this attention towards the upstanding principles that are emboldened in the Holy Book.

This article had several themes that revolved around the topic of the image of God. There were two major themes that were seen in this article. The first is defining the image of God and where it can be found in an individual. The second major theme is the fall and how it effects the image of God. These themes are discussed by various philosophers and theologians throughout history.

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

Blake’s work is a total package because it communicates more than ideas. Blake believed that God resides within each human being” (Davis 208), and he invoked the spiritual world with his drawings trying to connect the “abyss of the five senses” to the divine spirit within (Blake 226). Blake’s art decorated his written word while delivering religious mythology which appears to be firmly rooted in a time before the Enlightenment.

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.

Some of William Blake’s poetry is categorized into collections called Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Blake explores almost opposite opinions about creation in his poems “The Lamb” and “The Tiger.” While the overarching concept is the same in both, he uses different subjects to portray different sides of creation; however, in the Innocence and Experience versions of “The Chimney Sweeper,” Blake uses some of the same words, rhyme schemes, and characters to talk about a single subject in opposite tones.