William Blake And The Romantic Era

William Blake was a painter, poet, and engraver of the Romantic era. He was born in London on November 28, 1757 as the third of five children. He claimed to have experienced visions when he was young, as early as four years old, when he saw God’s head in a window, and then again at the age of nine when he saw a tree filled with angels. Blake learned to read and write at an early age, having briefly attended school but primarily being taught at home by his mother.

Blake had an active imagination and a talent for drawing. His father enrolled him at Henry Pars’s drawing school by the age of ten, and he became the apprentice to an engraver at the age of 14, completing his apprenticeship seven years later at the age of 21. Blake married Catherine Boucher, who was a supporting wife to the day he died, when he was 25. The tragic loss of his brother to tuberculosis caused a great change to his style of writing later on. A vision of his brother gave him a new method of stylizing his poetry, which he called “illuminating printing” (Biography.com). Though his works went unnoticed for the majority of his life, eventually his poetry received credit for its influence in the Romantic era and therefore in modern day literature.

William Blake made many contributions to the literature of the Romantic era, though at the time he was little-known. His creative works and his passionate style of writing earned him a reputation by some during his lifetime as being crazy. (Odessa.edu) “Blake felt that, unlike most people, his spiritual life was varied, free and dramatic” (Neoenglish.wordpress.com). After all, the purpose was to be as original as possible, and the romantic era was more open to myths, mystics, and spiritual world than the previous Enligh...

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... combination of the two elements using his illumination technique. Many new techniques and movements were based upon Romanticism. “Romantic ideals never specifically died out in poetry, but were largely absorbed into the precepts of many other movements. Traces of romanticism lived on in French symbolism and surrealism and in the work of prominent poets…” (Poets.org)

The effects of Romanticism are seen in the styles of writing that often appear in today’s writings. Idealism and romance are strong themes, as are supernatural forces and creatures. Many of the books read today have happy endings where everything is resolved in the end. Not only did Romanticism affect literature; it affected much of the entertainment of the modern era, including television. The themes of the era never died out. If anything, they have dominated most of the literature that is read today.