William Blake as a Man of His Time

William Blake as a Man of His Time

William Blake was a writer, artist, poet and master engraver. These

talents were put together to form an amazing collection of poetical

and philosophical masterpieces. Blake was born in 1757 and lived in

London. He never attended school, but was self-taught and at the age

of fourteen he became apprentice in an acclaimed London engraver where

he studied the skill of the trade for seven years. The first known

poetry that he wrote was when he was 12 and he later produced these as

his first collection. He produced many collections of poetry that he

illustrated himself and although he is well known today he spent his

many years in poverty and died in 1827.

Blake incorporated the social events of the period into his writing.

This is highly apparent in his poem "The Tiger" where he uses the

tiger as a symbol of these events. One of the major events that were

happening in the world in 1789 was the French revolution. This had

started an antimonarchist movement in England. These revolutionary

ideas can be interpreted from some of the lines and phrases found in

this poem. For example the phrase "When the stars threw down their

spears" could be interpreted as a metaphor for the blade of the

guillotine in France and the stars are metaphors for god. Also on the

following line "And water'd heaven with their tears" could be

interpreted as the tears of woe of the aristocracy and the deposed

king the reason that heaven is mentioned is that it is a metaphor for

godly misery. But it could also be the pain of the people as not only

aristocrats were put to death. This also an example of how Blake uses

personificatio...

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another thing that is featured in Blake's poems which is

indoctrination, this still happens today with the government using

spin-doctors in "The little chimney sweep" and "The little black boy "

the children are led to believe that if the suffer during life they

will go to heaven this indoctrination of the church.

We can see that Blake brings up many issues that troubled him about

the unfairness of life at the time. He uses his poetry to try and

inspire people to help stop the atrocities of his time. He was

defiantly a man of his times who wanted to speak about the injustice

of the world to all. But on the other hand he also brings up issues

that were going on before his day and still are problems in today's

society. For example racism is still a big problem. So Blake was both

a man of his day and of all time.