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Essay on romantiç poetry
Essay on romantiç poetry
A note on romantic poetry
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William Blake was a poet and artist who was born in London, England in 1757. He lived 69 years, and although his work went largely unnoticed during his lifetime, he is now considered a prominent English Romantic poet. Blake’s religious views, and his philosophy that “man is god”, ran against the religious thoughts at the time, and some might equate Blake’s views to those of the hippie movement of the 20th century.
In “The Garden of Love”, the conflict between organized religion and individual thought is the constant idea throughout the poem. Blake's colorful use of imagery and heavy symbolism express his resentment toward the church. He makes it obvious how he feels, that it is restrictive in nature and hinders him from expressing his loves, joys, and desires. The poem begins with the narrator lying beside a river, where “love lay sleeping”. Blake laying with love on the riverbank leads us to believe that he knows love in an intimate way. Blake’s familiarity to this intimacy is a clear reference to his experience of sex, and his discovery that love can be expressed sexually (Devin). Blake’s use of repetition when he describes the weeping sounds he hears from the “rushes dank” enforces the concern felt by the narrator.
In the second stanza, the narrator goes to the “heath and the wild” and the “thorns and thistles” where they tell him that they were “beguiled” and “driven out.” This is the first indication that the reader receives that indicates love is under attack. These plants represent weeds, an undesirable nuisance to those who cultivate gardens. Blake uses personification when they say that they were “driven out” or exiled from the garden of love. They then go onto say that they were “compelled to the chaste”, meaning thei...
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... I enjoyed the poem. Blake keeps the reader fascinated with not only the structure and literary analysis aspect, but also with the taboo message of the laws of morality organized religion puts on our society. I admire Blake because he was truly ahead of his time in his thinking about free love and spirituality. Considering how controversial the discussion of the laws of morality is today, is isn’t a wonder that his work went largely unnoticed in his time. This poem has opened my eyes, and made me question the legitimacy of all the briars that bind to my joys and desires.
Works Cited
Frye, Northrop. Blake. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1966.
Blake. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966.
Griffiths, Nick. "Poets and Poetry." www.Helium.com. Helium, Inc., n.d. Web. 13 Mar 2010. .
Blake also uses sound to deliver the meaning to the poem. The poem starts off with "My mother groaned! my father wept." You can hear the sounds that the parents make when their child has entered this world. Instead of joyful sounds like cheer or cries of joy, Blake chooses words that give a meaning that it is not such a good thing that this baby was brought into this world. The mother may groan because of the pain of delivery, but she also groans because she knows about horrible things in this world that the child will have to go through. The father also weeps for the same reason, he knows that the child is no longer in the safety of the womb, but now is in the world to face many trials and tribulations.
baby then calls itself joy so that it can be happy and live a joyful
The speaker personifies the flower by describing how the moon-lily sings: “…it is singing—very far/ but very clear and sweet” (10-11). The voice of the flower is the voice of the woman. The flower is calling out to the man. The fact that the flower has to call out to the man implies that he does not accept the love of the woman. The speaker also describes the distance between the two people. He states, “The voice is always in some other room” (12). Once again the speaker is describing distance, but the man does not try to close the distance. The reason the man does not try to close the distance is because he does not love the woman. The lily represents the female and their love. In the poem, the speaker talks about a “garden” which is a metaphor for the female’s life (13). In the garden the speaker describes the flower as “in bloom” and that the flower “stands full and/ proud” (13,14-15). This section of the poem tells the reader that the woman’s love is strong and unwavering. The speaker compares the woman’s love to a lily because the love is pure of heart and beautiful. The relationship that the poem depicts is unhealthy for the female. The woman is putting too much effort into a nonexistent
William Blake, was 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. The Romanticism is a movement that developed during the 18th and early 19th century as a reaction against the Restoration and Enlightenment periods focuses on logic and reason. Blake’s poetry would focus on imagination. When Blake created his work, it gained very little attention. Blake’s artistic and poetic vision consists in his creations. Blake was against the Church of England because he thought the doctrines were being misused as a form of social control, it meant the people were taught to be passively obedient and accept oppression, poverty, and inequality. In Blake’s poems “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” and Proverbs of Hell, he shows that good requires evil in order to exist through imagery animals and man.
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.
It is in lines 10 – 24 that the poem becomes one of hope. For when Blake writes “As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free;” Blake’s words ring true of hope for the sw...
Mason, Michael. Notes to William Blake: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Michael Mason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
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.
William Blake’s early interest and aptitude for drawing had set a blueprint for his next life in writing inspiring poems. He believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of men. His time of being raised in a household of seven children with only five surpassing infancy, most likely gave way to his powerful writings. Most of all his work features some type of wearisome protagonist, who is attempting to revolt against some greater being; it could be politically religious or the theme of love and marriage. It is unclear exactly were Blake stood in terms of his beliefs in God; however, William Blake made many references to God and a supernatural being within his works of writing poems.
The theme of authority is possibly the most important theme and the most popular theme concerning William Blake’s poetry. Blake explores authority in a variety of different ways particularly through religion, education and God. Blake was profoundly concerned with the concept of social justice. He was also profoundly a religious man. His dissenting background led him to view the power structures and legalism that surrounded religious establishments with distrust. He saw these as unwarranted controls over the freedom of the individual and contrary to the nature of a God of liberty. Figures such as the school master in the ‘schoolboy’, the parents in the ‘chimney sweeper’ poems, the guardians of the poor in the ‘Holy Thursday’, Ona’s father in ‘A Little girl lost’ and the priestly representatives of organised religion in many of the poems, are for Blake the embodiment of evil restriction.
After long deliberation with the writings of Blake 'experts,' I have conceded to concur with their interpretations of "The Garden of Love," and therefore: According to Ostriker, Blake "celebrates sexuality and attacks repression" (156). I agree that his attack on repression is apparent in this poem, in that Blake seems to want the speaker, and the readers, to take a chance on life, love, or sex. Whatever the convention of each individual, Blake wants us to not be afraid to go against the conventional. Yet the speaker in "The Garden of Love" is constrained to move forward with his own decisions, probably restricted by the strict conventions of the Church. The priests follow suit as a reminder of 'conventional holiness.'
Lyrically speaking, the core of the song lies in the fact that forest fires, although deadly and powerful, are necessary for the health of a forest. This fatal fountain of youth restores soil and replenishes watersheds and by doing so, transforms dry, nutrient ridden earth to a state of fertility and possibility. Blake utilizes this intriguingly beautiful metaphor to describe the state of a relationship that is taking its natural, yet nonetheless painful
Throughout all of his literary works, Blake incorporates many classic romantic characteristics. But he also incorporated important people and events surrounding the time period. One of his most controversial works, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” explores three of the most prominent romantic themes in his works: the battle between good and evil, the presence of the supernatural and an affinity for nature. Most likely inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg’s “Heaven and Hell”, Blake used common romantic symbolism to demonstrate the prophetic meanings of the pieces in the book. In “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, Blake alludes to the idea that,
withholding the anger from the “foe”. Blake uses the simplicity of the poem to surprise his
The final image conveyed is the foe lying “outstretched beneath the tree” (16), breaking the poem’s gradual movement by jumping to the following morning. With dawn comes simultaneously the poem’s climax and resolution: the speaker is “glad [to] see / My foe outstretched beneath the tree” (15-16). The speaker seems satisfied that his deceitful plan worked, ridding himself of his source of wrath by poisoning it with his festered anger. Omitting the murder scene from the poem only emphasizes the murderous means by which the speaker has taken to avenge himself. Here, Blake reflects the speaker’s state of mind: as he wants to kill his enemy, he also desires to kill his own conscience, blurring away the act of murder as he blurs away the source of his anger.