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Critical analysis of songs of innocence and experience
Songs of innocence and experience comparison
Critical analysis of songs of innocence and experience
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William Blake, the author of the two exceptional poems, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” does an excellent job of creating two very similar, yet divergent pieces of literature. The two poems, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience,” both use literary devices to, consequently, produce a light and dark tone throughout the pieces.
First of all, both of the written works commence with a mournful tone that is very comprehensive to the reader at hand. The “Songs of Experience” and “Songs of Innocence” both steadily persist with a grim tone throughout their stanzas by using specific words such as “crying,” “black,” and “death;” all of which bring a negative connotation into the reader's mind. However, “Songs of Innocence” has a drastic tone shift midway through the poem. Conversely, the other poem doesn't really every swap tones. William Blake also uses diction in both of the poems to assist in the creation of the grim tone at hand. Moreover, a clear example of diction used to create a cheerless mood can be seen in line eight of “Songs of Experience” where it states, “(the parents) ...taught me to sing the notes of woe,” in which clearly conjures up a gloomy tone into the tale of young chimney sweeps.
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After all the gloomy stanzas in the beginning of “Songs of Innocence,” the tone takes a shift roughly around line eight when the first person character in the poem begins praising Tom for his white hair, thus eventually bringing a smirk back to Tom’s face. The poem then proceeds to use a whole miscellany of words that create a hopeful tone such as: “happy,” “white,” “heaven,” “joy,” and “warm.” Even though “Songs of Experience” has a scarce amount of optimistic tone words, they all are used for a negative scheme that persists through every
The fact that they feel they can sit about the knee of their mother, in this stereotypical image of a happy family doesn’t suggest that the children in this poem are oppressed... ... middle of paper ... ... y has a negative view of the childish desire for play which clearly has an effect on the children. The fact that they the are whispering shows that they are afraid of the nurse, and that they cannot express their true thoughts and desires freely, which is why they whisper, and therefore shows that Blake feels that children are oppressed. I feel that the two poems from innocence which are ‘The Echoing Green,’ and ‘The Nurses Song,’ display Blake’s ideological view of country life which I referred to in my introduction, and show his desire for childhood to be enjoyed.
Blake's poem, The Little Black Boy seems to be more hopeful then More's, The Sorrows of Yamba, which is in accordance with comments made about Blake's general attitude in Songs of Innocence. This hopefulness appears to come from a combination of faith and hope on the part of the author mixed with a type of ignorance on the characters part. The boy does not know any better; therefore, he can envision a heaven where he is an equal to the white English boy in heaven with him. More's poem does not seem as hopeful, it is more laden with grotesque imagery, something we might expect to see in a counterpart to Little Black Boy in Songs of Experience. More's descriptions are corporeal, and the despair and pain seem to be shouting out of these carcasses with 'mangled flesh.' Part of this difference in tonality may be due to the gender of the narrators and similarly the authors. As a man, Blake has always maintained the position a more privileged position in society compared to More simply because she is a woman. Although Blake may not agree with slavery, he is not writing from the perspective of a person who has been marginalized because of a biological difference within him, whereas More is. Perhaps because of this she has more knowledge and understanding of the internal strife, and more of a right to speak, of a person of color being stripped of all they have - even the desire to live.
In a dream the boy has an “Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy, he’d have God for his father, and never want joy” (Blake 19-20). This gives the boy the motivation that he needs to continue his life and so as he awoke, he “was happy and warm; / [and] if [he did his] duty [he] need not fear harm” (Blake 23-24). The young boy decides to suffer through his brutal everyday life so that one day he can go to heaven, where he will be happy. These two polar opposite approaches to dealing with the misfortune of the characters is what shapes both the theme and tone of the poems. Another similarity between these two poems is their extensive use of imagery.
All appearances of the ordinary world from the highest mountain peak to the most delicate little flower. Wordsworth elevated these thoughts and fervent emotions in the people who perceive these appearances. Wordsworth repeatedly highlights the significance of nature to a person’s brain and religious development. Therefore, William Wordsworth I think strongly expresses his emotions and feelings through nature. William Blake in the Songs of Innocence brings out the simple fears and hopes that tell the lives of children and traces their conversion as the child grows up to be an adult. In William Blake’s poems he tries to draw attention to the encouraging aspects of a person’s ordinary human understanding, while others have a more serious stance, prior to the corruption and distortion of experience. This mixture of the conventional mixed with the new is consistent with Blake’s continuous interest in reassessing and reframing the expectations of humans thought process and social behavior. Therefore, William brings out the emotions through social behavior and how humans act. Emily Dickinson is a very special writer because everything she writes are often parts of the topography of her own psyche. Emily likes to explore her own feelings with meticulous and often raw honesty, but never loses sight of the widespread graceful poetic application. Emily Dickinson greatest part about her is that she writes about the facts and details of her own life and emotions and how it relates to her and other people, which is how she brings out the emotions in her poems. Beethoven exhibited encouraging emotions in his music. A good example is Ode to Joy in his Ninth Symphony, where the poetic adoration of peace and of our common comradeship and civilization are magnificently and powerfully put in musical terms. During Beethoven’s last eight years of his life, he was completely deaf, yet he did not
Blake, William. The. The “Songs of Innocence and Experience”. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Age of Romanticism. V.4 2006 36-44.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary innocence is defined as uncorrupted by evil, malice, without wrongdoing, sinless, and not experienced. Experience, however, is the activity or practice through which knowledge or skill is derived. If this is the case why are both in the same poem? Some would say that in poems such as "Infant Sorrow" the innocence that is usually attributed to the birth of a newborn can become a harsh and dreadful experience to both the mother and the infant being pulled from the womb.
In William Blake’s poems “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Innocence and “The Chimney Sweeper” from Songs of Experience, the reader is able to understand the viewpoints of children treated unfairly. The Songs of Innocence version of the poem, written in 1789, describes how a boy helps a fellow chimney sweeper find comfort despite their struggles. This boy then dreams about an angel that sets sweepers like him free and how they find happiness in their freedom. In his dream, the boy learns that if he will “be a good boy,” he will find salvation in God. The Songs of Experience version, written five years later, is about a boy that seems happy so his parents think they have not done any wrong to him. The boy’s parents are “gone up to the church to pray” while he is clothed in “the clothes of death” and taught to sing sorrowfully. Both poems allude to the religious aspect of the Romantic Period, leading to their theme of redemption. The theme of redemption is shown in the exploitation of children depicted in the poems, the use of symbolism throughout each, and the inevitable loss of innocence.
"A Little GIRL Lost" from Songs of Experience is one of Blake's most important poems. Though judging the aesthetic value of a poem is nearly impossible, I would contend that "A Little Girl Lost" is "better" than "The Little Girl Lost" found in Songs of Innocence. Perhaps because "A Little Girl Lost" was composed as an afterthought to its original counterpart, having been first written in "Innocence," it acts as a conclusion to the original poem. The two poems both observe a young girl as she encounters a world filled with innocence (in "The Little Girl Lost") and a world of experience ("A Little Girl Lost"). In first poem, a young seven-year-old girl named Lyca falls asleep in the wilderness under a tree. While her parents worry about her, she sleeps innocently in the woods with a lion prancing around her while she slumbers. The poetic vision seems to be a portrayal of young love--of innocence unprotected in the passion-haunted forest. In the second poem, found in "Experience," the feeling shifts from innocence to suggest a subversive course of love exploration. The young girl, Ona, discovers passion only to find that her father has a negative view on the very love she has just been introduced to. "A Little Girl Lost" seems to be much deeper in thought than "The Little Girl Lost." This depth in content begins with the title, which gives the poem an aura of uneasiness. A feeling that it is dangerous or sinful stems from word "Little" ...
The optimistic tone from Songs of Innocence is distinctively different to the cynical tone of Songs of Experience; it is almost like they were both written to tell a story when read together about a once wide-eyed hard worker who grew to become a resentful chimney sweeper. Both poems use the same “‘Weep! ‘Weep!” quote, in varying ways. Songs of Innocence is written about when Tom was just sold “while yet my tongue could scarcely cry…” and Songs of Experience wrote “Crying…” as if he had been a slave for a while and could weep based on experience of being
William Blake, the author of Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, was a poet and an artist. The Songs of Innocence (1789) is a book of poems, showing the idea that God’s love is in everything on earth. Five years later he added the Songs of Experience (1794) to the collection. The new poems shows the power of evil.Although Blake’s poems were so powerful, he lived a simple life. He worked as an engraver and a professional artist, but he was always very poor. His work received little attention and when it did, most people found it confusing. Blake shows you cannot have good without evil in “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” and the Proverbs of Hell, through the use of animal symbolism.
Furthermore, Blake places in the poems the concept of losing and holding on to faith and hope which make up the virtues of innocence. The first chimney sweeper poem discusses gaining divine compensation for the suffering that these boys go through on Earth. Even though, the conditions are dismal and will bring certain death, the sweepers should still have hope they will make it to Heaven. The thought of this promise is able to shield the sweepers from being consumed by the sorrow presented in Tom Dacre’s dream. Unlike, the poem in Songs of Innocence, The Chimney Sweeper in Song of Experience is much darker on purpose.
The “Infant Joy” from “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake is a simple song that highlights the joy of childbirth from a mother’s perspective. The mother asks the child what she should name the newborn child. The newborn names itself Joy, because that is all it knows. In contrast, “Infant Sorrow” from “Songs of Experience” by William Blake is a simple song that focuses on childbirth from the infants perspective. It is a much less pleasant experience compared to that of the mother’s.
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.
The Schoolboy is a poem which at first, William Blake, the author of the poem, put in his original version of Songs of Innocence but eventually moved it to the other half of his complete work, Songs of Innocence and Experience. His change of mind of the suitable position for The School Boy shows indecision by Blake regarding whether he should divide the works into two divergent sections or keep them together to resemble the crucial eminence of this particular poem. An elucidation of the poem is that Blake knew beforehand and was planning out the larger work when Songs of Innocence was first published, and that he intentionally decided to have dissimilar poems like The Schoolboy to institute at least some tension through the concurrence of them centered on other carefully planned out works. This understanding is further supported because Blake already completed plenty of the poems earlier, and these later became the Songs of Experience when the former work had been published. Therefore, it is straightforward to envisage that Blake was experimenting, which led to a couple divergent poems added momentarily to Songs of Innocence. But beside the point, these distinctive characteristics of the background of The Schoolboy are incorporated to emphasize the poem as something worth evaluating more closely, for there is far more to it than meets the eye.
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...