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Contrast between the vision of innocence and of experience in Blake's Songs of innocence and of experience
Essay on romantic literature
Essay on romantic literature
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considered to be a groundbreaking forefather of what has become the Romantic genre. His poetry and even paintings have been distinguished as ¨Pre Romantic¨ due to his aid the development of the Romantic Period. The Song of Innocence and Experience is a collection of poems written by William Blake. “Innocence” and “Experience” are two definitions of consciousness that rethink John Milton’s existential-mythic states of “Paradise” and the “Fall”, this coincides with the romantic notion that adolescence is a state of protected innocence instead of original sin and yet is still not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. “The Divine Image” from Blake’s Songs of Innocence is in the form of five ballad stanzas, quatrains where each line
has four and three beats which alternate and rhyme in an ABCB pattern. In English poetry, this form of stanza projects a sort of honesty and naturalness, this is usual in nursery rhymes, songs and hymns. In the first stanza, Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love are capitalized, this is more than likely because of their depiction to the parts of religion and God. These virtues are repeated within the poem various times which suggests their relation to God. This portrayal of God is a distinguished characteristic of the Romantic era where religion shaped people’s lives and was held highest of their priorities. By capitalizing mercy, pity, peace and love, Blake highlights their gravity.
Analyzing innocence has always been a difficult task, not only due to it’s rapid reevaluation in the face of changing societal values, but also due to the highly private and personal nature of the concept. The differences between how people prioritize different types of innocence - childhood desires, intellectual naivety, sexual purity, criminal guilt, etc. - continually obscures the definition of innocence. This can make it difficult for people to sympathize with others’ loss of purity, simply because their definition of that loss will always be dissimilar to the originally expressed idea. Innocence can never truly be adequately described, simply because another will never be able to precisely decipher the other’s words. It is this challenge, the challenge of verbally depicting the isolationism of the corruption of innocence, that Tim O’Brien attempts to endeavour in his fictionalized memoir, The
He was the leader or the romantic revolution and was celebrity in his time. His poem that made him well know was Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
"Literary Analysis of The Age of Innocence." Literary Analysis of The Age of Innocence. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2014. .
All the poems agree that innocence is an important stage of mankind’s life, but they differ in how much time innocence should last - for example, The Lamb may suggest as long period of innocence than Mrs Tilcher’s Class. Experience with the exception of The Tyger, is perceived a being a must in everyone’s lifetime although as expressed especially in Piano it may seem hard to contemplate.
In the Neo-classical novel Candide the theme of innocence and experience is prevalent through the protagonist, Candide, journey of finding the prescription of how to live a useful life in the face of a harsh reality. In addition William Blake’s collection of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience the two characters, tyger and lamb, show how we lose our innocence to gain experience. Although the innocence and experience are paradoxical terms, we can solve the paradox by analyzing these two works.
William Blake was first and foremost an imaginative genius. He worked as both a painter and an author who beautifully illustrated not only his own works but also illustrated others writings. His artistic skill is unrivalled for diversity as he created each copy of his books with slight differences, mainly in colour and tones. He illustrates his opinions on innocence and experience through numerous poems in his work ‘Songs of innocence and experience’ and numerous other books. Much of his work deals with the concept of both innocence and experience through religion and contrary statements.
Overall, it is apparent that Blake is extremely critical of the exploitation of children during his time period. Blake’s Songs of Innocence provides more implicit social commentary which forces the reader to think deeply about child exploitation. Songs of Experience presents a direct social commentary due to the mature nature of the child speaker. Although both texts provide similar social commentary, Songs of Experience expresses social commentary more directly due to the outspoken and mature nature of the child. Songs of Experience was likely written as a follow-up to Songs of Innocence at a later date in order to solidify the implicit ideas presented in Songs of Innocence.
Johnson, Mary Lynn and John E. Grant, eds. Blake's Poetry and Designs. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1979.
There are often two sides to everything: chocolate and vanilla, water and fire, woman and man, innocence and experience. The presence of two opposing items allows for harmony and balance in the world. Without water, fire cannot be put out and without woman there can be no man. William Blake’s poetry collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience draws parallels between poems of “innocence” and poems of “experience”. His poem The Lamb is mirrored by his poem The Tyger.
William Blake, one of the infamous English romantic poets, is most known for his romantic views on conventional scenes and objects, which were presented in his works The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience. The first collection was published in 1789, and addresses subjects such as suffering and death from the innocent and optimistic perspective of a child. The later collection addresses these same issues, but is told from the perspective of an experienced bard. The poems contained in The Songs of Innocence often have a counter part in the second collection that reflects a darker or more corrupted take on the same subject. For example, the purity presented in the creation of “The Lamb” is dramatically contrasted with its shameful counterpart “The Tyger”.
In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Blake differentiates between being experienced and being innocent. In the poem "Spring," the speaker focuses on the coming of spring and the excitement surrounding it which is emphasized by the trochaic meter of the poem. Everyone, including the animals and children, is joyful and getting ready for the new season, a season of rebirth and a new arrival of nature’s gifts.
William Blake was an influential English poet during the mid 18th and mid 19th centuries. He is still known as a prominent figure of the Romantic Period. In Blake’s early years as a teenager he began writing poetry, and in 1794 he published Songs of Experience. Songs of Experience is a collection of twenty-six poems, and it formed the second part of Songs of Innocence. One of these twenty-six poems in Songs of Experience is “The Angel”. In this poem, Blake used the maiden queen, the angel, and the dream as symbolic figures in order to portray this poem as a tragic love story. My interpretation of “The Angel” is how a person’s view of love can evolve over time.
In the William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the vision of children and adults are placed in opposition of one another. Blake portrays childhood as a time of optimism and positivity, of heightened connection with the natural world, and where joy is the overpowering emotion. This joyful nature is shown in Infant Joy, where the speaker, a newborn baby, states “’I happy am,/ Joy is my name.’” (Line 4-5) The speaker in this poem is portrayed as being immediately joyful, which represents Blake’s larger view of childhood as a state of joy that is untouched by humanity, and is untarnished by the experience of the real world. In contrast, Blake’s portrayal of adulthood is one of negativity and pessimism. Blake’s child saw the most cheerful aspects of the natural wo...
William Blake was one of England’s greatest writers (Tejvan) in the nineteenth century, but his brilliancy was not noticed until after he was deceased. Blake was very much a free spirit who often spoke his mind and was very sensitive to cruelty. At the age of twenty five he married a woman named Catherine Boucher. They created a book of all Blake’s poems called Songs on Innocence, which was not very popular while he was alive. On the other hand Blake’s other book of poems, Songs of Experience, were much more popular. These two collections are so magnificent because it is two different forms of writing successfully written by one man. Two major poems written by William Blake were “The Tyger” and “The Lamb”. The Lamb is from Songs of Innocence while The Tyger is from Songs of Experience, they may share different perspectives on the world yet they both complement one another very well. Blake believed that life could be viewed from two different perspectives, those being innocence and experience. To Blake, innocence is not better than experience. Both states have their good and bad sides. The positive side of innocence is joy and optimism, while the bad side is naivety. The negative side of experience is cynicism, but the good side is wisdom (Shmoop Editorial Team). The Tyger and The Lamb are two completely different styles of poems yet it wouldn’t have the same affect on a reader if one poem didn’t exist.
LaGuardia, Cheryl. "WILLIAM BLAKE: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE." Library Journal 128.9 (2003): 140. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 July 2011.