William Blake
A man of many talents, William Blake adds to the incredible lists of poets. Blake was not acknowledged for his poetic works until after his death. William Blake is known as one of England’s greatest poets of our time. As a young man Blake had an immense amount of accomplishments. His natural aptitudes continued throughout his life. Blake’s life, poems, and passions of life created an engrossed life.
William Blake was born in London, England on November 28, 1757 to his parents Catherine Wright Armitage and James Blake (1-1). William rarely was present at school. He was mostly taught by his mother (1-2). At the age of ten Blake enrolled into the Henry Pars Drawing School (1-3). William Blake began writing at a very young age (1-1). His visions contributed to his writings and his artwork (1-2). Blake’s first vision was of the prophet Ezekiel standing under a tree occupied with angels at the age of ten (1-2).
Williams’s mother greatly influenced every aspect of his life (1-4). The Bible also had an abundant inspiration on him (1-2). The Bible to him was a lifelong source of information. At the age of fourteen William received an apprenticeship to the master in London Society of Antiquaries to make drawings of tombs and monuments (1-4). On August 4, 1772 apprenticed to James Bashire of Great Queen Street for seven years (4-3). With those seven years Blake only made 52.10 euros at the end of his apprenticeship he became a professional engraver (2-2). Later that year Blake was accepted into the Royal Academy of Art's Schools of Design in Old Somerset House (1-4). Blake supplied his own material throughout the six year period of him attending the school (4-2). While attending the school in 1779 Blake became a journeyman...
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.... In lines nine through twelve after Tom so upset about his hair he finally falls asleep. William begins to have a dream of thousands of sweepers all locked in black coffins. In lines thirteen through sixteen an angel showed up and unlocked all of the coffins and set the sweepers free. The sweepers then began to run down a green plain all happy and joyful (5-2).
In 1794 William Blake published the poem Infant sorrow. In lines one through four of the poem Williams’s mother groans in sadness and his father weeps in agony. William Blake states the hardships of the dangerous world he was born into (3-1). He was helpless, naked, and crying loud. In lines five through eight Blake begins to struggle in his fathers arms, he is trying to free hiself and get away but no matter how hard he tries he can’t get away. He just gives up and sulks against his mother’s chest (3-2).
William Blake focused on biblical images in the majority of his poetry and prose. Much of his well-known work comes from the two compilations Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The poems in these compilations reflect Blake's metamorphosis in thought as he grew from innocent to experienced. An example of this metamorphosis is the two poems The Divine Image and A Divine Image. The former preceded the latter by one year.
William Blake was probably more concerned than any other major Romantic author with the process of publication and its implications for the interpretation of his artistic creations. He paid a price for this degree of control over the process of printing, however: Blake lived in poverty and artistic obscurity throughout his entire life. Later, when his poems began to be distributed among a wider audience, they were frequently shorn of their original contexts. For William Blake, there has been a trade-off between the size of the audience he has reached and the degree of control he exerted over the publication process.
godly misery. But it could also be the pain of the people as not only
The poem opens with an introduction of the speaker: “When my mother died I was very young, / And my father sold me while yet my tongue / Could scarcely cry ’weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!” (ll. 1-3). The speaker’s pathetic circumstance is stressed here, and he quickly wins the sympathy of the reader; Blake makes this possible by quickly relating some but doubtfully all the previous sorrow that the speaker has endured. First, his mother died when he, and perhaps she, too, was quite young, a common occurrence in Industrial Age England, given the dismal shape of the inner city, which was host to such problems as over-crowding, poor hygienic practices and sub-par means of sanitation—all of which ultimately led to the deaths of thousands. Second, his father apparently sold him, or, more likely, forced him to work to supplement the family’s income. Child Labor laws had yet to be enacted in England in 1789, s...
William Blake is a literature genius. Most of his work speaks volume to the readers. Blake’s poem “The Mental Traveller” features a conflict between a male and female that all readers can relate to because of the lessons learned as you read. The poet William Blake isn’t just known for just writing. He was also a well-known painter and a printmaker. Blake is considered a seminal figure in the history of poetry. His poems are from the Romantic age (The end of the 18th Century). He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain. He was the third of seven children. Even though Blake was such an inspiration as a writer he only went to school just enough to read and write. According to Bloom’s critical views on William Blake; one of Blake’s inspirations was the Bible because he believed and belonged to the Moravian Church.
The Romantic Era brought the time of William Blake, when his talent of artistry emerged with many unusual Renaissance of talents.William Blake was on 28 November, 1757 in London, Europe. He was an extraordinary child out of rest of his six siblings, in which two of them died in his early childhood. Starting from his early childhood, William Blake talked about having strange visions such as at the age of four he saw god putting his head to the window and around the age of nine, when he was walking through the landscape area; he saw a huge tree that
William Blake, born in 1757 and died in 1827, created the poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell. Blake grew up in a poor environment. He studied to become an engraver and a professional artist. His engraving took part in the Romanticism era. Romanticism is a movement that developed during the 18th and early 19th century as a reaction against the Restoration and Enlightenment periods focusing on logic and reason.
William Blake was an English romantic poet who lived from 1757 to 1827 through both the American and the French revolutions. Although he lived during the Romantic Age, and was clearly part of the movement, Blake was a modern thinker who had a rebellious political spirit. He was the first to turn poetry and art into sociopolitical weapons to be raised rebelliously against the establishment. His poetry exemplified many of the same topics being discussed today. Although he was known as both a madman and a mystic, (Elliott) his poetry is both relevant and radical. He employed a brilliant approach as he took in the uncomfortable political and moral topics of his day and from them he created unique artistic representations. His poetry recounts in symbolic allegory the negative effects of the French and American revolutions and his visual art portrays the violence and sadistic nature of slavery. Blake was arguably one of the most stubbornly anti-oppression and anti-establishment writers in the English canon.
In one of the illustrations, the Little Black Boy is still black when he meets God even though in the poem he claims that color will no longer matter. The way that they are standing is very interesting too because the poem suggests that they will be equal, but the Little Black Boy is described as standing behind the child and in the picture, he is standing behind the white boy. This could be another example of Blake showing how innocent people and naïve people are close to the same thing. The boy thinks one way, but Blake is showing the reader the way things really are through his
William Blake is remembered by his poetry, engravements, printmaking, and paintings. He was born in Soho, London, Great Britain on November 28, 1757. William was the third of seven siblings, which two of them died from infancy. As a kid he didn’t attend school, instead he was homeschooled by his mother. His mother thought him to read and write. As a little boy he was always different. Most kids of his age were going to school, hanging out with friends, or just simply playing. While William was getting visions of unusual things. At the age of four he had a vision of god and when he was nine he had another vision of angles on trees.
Infant Sorrow by William Blake is about the birth of a child into a dangerous world. The meaning behind this poem is that when a baby is born, they are entering a place that is unfamiliar to them and is full of hazardous circumstances and then seeks for safety and comfort by sulking on the mother's breast. Instead of blatantly telling the reader, Blake uses several poetic devices to deliver the meaning of Infant Sorrow. Some of the devices he uses are images, sound, figurative language, and the structure to bring out the meaning of his poem.
In William Blake’s poem Infant Joy he expresses a mother’s extreme happiness when she finds out she is pregnant with her first child, “Sweet joy but two days old, Thou dost smile.”(Line 8-11) The mother is so thrilled to find out she is having a baby, she even names it Joy. She believes she has almost a sixth sense and can feel that the fetus is just as cheerful as she is about new life and expect the baby to be pure perfection. In the same grouping of poetry William Blake also published a counter poem called Infant Sorrow describing birth of the fetus from Infant Joy and illustrates how even the first few minutes of baby’s life are nothing like expected, “Struggling in my fathers hands, To sulk upon my mothers breast.”(5-8) The infant’s mother thought her baby was going to be pure joy, and upon birth the infants attitude is completely different than expected. Joy could feel its dad was not ready for a child and did not even want to be held by him, nor did it want to be swaddled which comforts most newborns, but exhausted by all the actions that had just taken place the only thing the infant feels it can do it eat in gloom and accept the fact no matter the state of its parents Joy is here now and will never going away. Joy’s mother believed her current state in life would be
William Blake, a well known, British romantic poet, wrote The Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience. You can see in several of his poems, that when they are paired together they fit perfectly into his thesis of “Two contrary states of the Human Soul”. Along with his writings ,William Blake would have engravings that went with each of his poems that would were used to help enhance the tone of each of his poems. When it comes to William Blake’s thesis of “Two Contrary States of the Human Soul” it can best be described as two conflicting yet at the same time complementing states that the soul must go through. You must have the innocence and the experience. Both sides are necessary to each other and as William Blake wrote in his piece The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , “without contraries there is no progression” (Blake, P.148).
"William Blake - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss." The Literature Network: Online Classic Literature, Poems, and Quotes. Essays & Summaries. Web. 07 July 2011. .
In his work, Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, William Blake uses the aforementioned contrasting states of being to illustrate his unique view of the world around him. Through this work, Blake lays bare his soulful views of religion and ethics, daring the reader to continue on in their narcissistic attitudes and self-serving politics. While Blake's work had countless themes, some of the most prevalent were religious reform, social change, and morality. Philosophically, one would think that William Blake was a Deist; however Blake rejected the Deist view of life. He was a devout Christian, yet he also wanted nothing to do with the church or their teachings. These views give Blake a refreshingly sincere quality with regards to his art and writings. Blake frequently alluded to Biblical teachings in his work and, more often than not, used corresponding story lines to rail against the Church's views and accepted practices. One may say however, that Blake's universal appeal lies within his social commentary. Similar to a fable, Blake weaves a poetically mystical journey for the reader, usually culminating in a moral lesson. One such poem, "A Poison Tree," clearly illustrates some of William Blake's moral beliefs. With his use of imagery, as well as an instinctive knowledge of human nature, William Blake shows just how one goes from the light to the darkness (from innocence to experience) by the repression of emotions.