Romantic period is an age when writers focus on the power of human mind and seek for the promotion of individual’s sensibility in understanding the world and even creating its own through imagination. However, Romantic writing is not always aimed at the development of individuals. Actually, literary works in this period have a close relationship with social conditions—seeking to promote the development of society is a crucial purpose in Romantic writing. In the following passage, I would like to discuss two famous Romantic authors, William Blake and Washington Irving, and how their works contribute to the development of society.
William Blake is a Romantic poet well-known for the creativity and exuberance in his poetry. Although Blake emphasises on human’s imagination and visions in spiritual world, his poetry also exhibits his reflection upon reality, especially on the social system and people’s living conditions. In his work Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake illustrates two different states of human soul, and he is the “seer of visions and communicator of them to society” (Watson 132)—he establishes the connection between the spiritual world and reality by poetry and stresses on the innocence of society in late 18th-century Britain.
Two poems entitled “The Chimney Sweeper” are respectively from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In these two poems, Blake illustrates the social problem of the abuse of innocence—children are convinced to do their duty, sweeping chimneys, to keep their innocence, and parents force them to do so under the cloak of praising innocence. Children in Songs of Innocence are unaware of the fact that they are exploited and abused and still pursue protection by being obedient and ...
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Works Cited
Anthony, David. “‘Gone Distracted’: ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ Gothic Masculinity, and the Panic of 1819” Early American Literature 40.1 (2005): 111-144
Blake, William. “The Chimney Sweeper.” The Norton Anthology English Literature Eighth Edition Volume 2. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York. 85&90. Print.
Irving, Washington. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.
Hochschild, Jennifer L. Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Print.
Scallet, Lisa. “Teacher’s Guide to The Core Classics Edition of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow & Other Tales”. n.p. Core Knowledge Foundation. Web. 12 Dec. 2013
Watson, J. R. English Poetry of the Romantic Period 1789-1830. 2nd ed. London: Longman, 1998. Print.
While William Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence was written before the French Revolution and Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience was written after, creating obvious differences in formal structure; these poems are also uniquely intertwined by telling the same story of children arriving to church on Holy Thursday. However, each gives a different perspective that plays off each other as well the idea of innocence and experience. The idea that innocence is simply a veil that we are not only aware of but use to mask the horrors of the world until we gain enough experience to know that it is better to see the world for simply what it is.
Romanticism, to the unknowing mind, symbolizes a writing style centered on romance. But, Romanticism portrays itself as much more than passion or relationships. Romanticism illustrates the fruit of the free-thinking mind, a mind that dreams of escaping civilization to return humankind’s origin; the bosom of Nature. Romanticism represents the immaculate child within who believes in freedom for all people, who is an avid enthusiast for spectral phenomena. All of the above themes are essential to Romantic writers, including Washington Irving. As one of the most famous Romantic writers of the early 19th century, Washington Irving joins Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne in the ranks of popular Romantic writers. Irving’s work contributed to the body of literature that becomes classified as American folklore. One of his most well-known narratives goes by the name of “Rip Van Winkle.” In “Rip Van Winkle,” Washington Irving displays his Romantic tendency by letting the following characteristics emerge in the pages of the story: the natural dignity of the common man, an interest in the supernatural, and the domination of spontaneity, individual feelings together with Nature over reason, logic, planning, and cultivation.
In this essay I am going to be looking at two poems from the Songs of innocence and experience works. These poems are The Lamb and The Tyger written by William Blake. Both these poems have many underlying meanings and are cryptic in ways and both poems are very different to each other. In this essay I will be analysing the two poems, showing my opinions of the underlying themes and backing them up with quotes from the poems. I will compare the poems looking at the similarities and differences between them and also look at each one individually focusing on the imagery, structure and the poetic devices William Blake has used. Firstly I will look at the Tyger a poem about experience.
Abstract: William Blake's Songs of Innocence contains a group of poetic works that the artist conceptualized as entering into a dialogue with each other and with the works in his companion work, Songs of Experience. He also saw each of the poems in Innocence as operating as part of an artistic whole creation that was encompassed by the poems and images on the plates he used to print these works. While Blake exercised a fanatical degree of control over his publications during his lifetime, after his death his poems became popular and were encountered without the contextual material that he intended to accompany them.
The theme of the suffering innocent person, dying and being diseased, throws a dark light onto the London seen through the eyes of William Blake. He shows us his experiences, fears and hopes with passionate images and metaphors creating a sensibility against oppression hypocrisy. His words come alive and ask for changes in society, government and church. But they remind us also that the continued renewal of society begins with new ideas, imagination and new works in every area of human experience.
The first poem “The Chimney Sweeper,” has an innocent child as a speaker, thus Blake’s main purpose in writing through the view point of a pure child who is soon to be corrupted and oppressed by society, is to create disturbance inside the readers mind, so they can share his fury. He goes through various measures to create an elevated depiction of the boys purity and innocence; an exact rhyme scheme (a childlike action), being “naked and white” in his dream (signs of purity), and being “Happy &warm” even when he has to sweep. The boy says “my father sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry ‘’weep!’Weep!’weep!,” thus since he is so young that he can not successfully advertise his job, it is implied that he was sold into apprenticeship way before he understood the injustice of his situation. Blake uses the Technique of naming the speaker, Little Tom Dacre, to make him into an actual individual that the re...
In the Romantic period, many authors make references to different social concerns. This enabled the authors to hint towards different concerns in their writing, but not come directly out and state their concerns. Three great examples of authors like this include: William Blake, Robert Burns, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Each of these authors had unique concerns that they were able to get across in their own way.
Throughout the Industrial Revolution in England in the 18th century, many children were forced to work against their own will, to support the growing need for labor in the demanding economy. William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper,” meticulously portrays the mindsets of two individuals obligated to carry out these societal expectations of working at a very young age. However, contrary to societies opinion on harmful child labor, Blake uses irony and sarcasm to convey his critical allegation of the wrongdoings of the church and society on their lack of effort to intervene and put an end to the detrimental job of adolescent chimney sweeping. By creating this ironic atmosphere, Blake establishes a poem that is full of despair and suffering but is sugar-coated and disguised with happiness and content provided by the church and society of London.
Both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience provide social criticism on the dangers that child chimney sweepers endure but, Songs of Experience provides better social commentary as Songs of Experience directly identifies the potential for death unlike Songs of Innocence which implicitly identifies the dangers child sweeps endure. In Songs of Innocence, the child chimney sweeper dreams that while he was “lock’d up in coffins of black…an Angel who had a bright key… open’d the coffins…set them all free” (Blake, “Innocence” 12-14). The child’s dream of freedom appears happy and optimistic when in reality it is quite chilling that the child views death as freedom. Blake presents the child chimney sweeper as optimistic to suggest that society needs to help the children find freedom so they do not wish to die. The social commentary in Songs of Innocence is implicit in order to emphasize the child’s inability to fully understand and c...
In his work, Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, William Blake uses the aforementioned contrasting states of being to illustrate his unique view of the world around him. Through this work, Blake lays bare his soulful views of religion and ethics, daring the reader to continue on in their narcissistic attitudes and self-serving politics. While Blake's work had countless themes, some of the most prevalent were religious reform, social change, and morality. Philosophically, one would think that William Blake was a Deist; however Blake rejected the Deist view of life. He was a devout Christian, yet he also wanted nothing to do with the church or their teachings. These views give Blake a refreshingly sincere quality with regards to his art and writings. Blake frequently alluded to Biblical teachings in his work and, more often than not, used corresponding story lines to rail against the Church's views and accepted practices. One may say however, that Blake's universal appeal lies within his social commentary. Similar to a fable, Blake weaves a poetically mystical journey for the reader, usually culminating in a moral lesson. One such poem, "A Poison Tree," clearly illustrates some of William Blake's moral beliefs. With his use of imagery, as well as an instinctive knowledge of human nature, William Blake shows just how one goes from the light to the darkness (from innocence to experience) by the repression of emotions.
The imagery of nature and humanity intermingling presents Blake's opinion on the inborn, innate harmony between nature and man. The persona of the poem goes on to express the `gentle streams beneath our feet' where `innocence and virtue meet'. This is where innocence dwells: synchronization with nature, not synchronization with industry where `babes are reduced to misery, fed with a cold usurous hand' as in the experienced version of `Holy Thursday'. The concept of the need for the individual's faithfulness to the laws of nature and what is natural is further reiterated in `the marriage of heaven and hell' in plate 10 where Blake states `where man is not, nature is barren'. The most elevated form of nature is human nature and when man resists and consciously negates nature, `nature' becomes `barren'. Blake goes on to say `sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires'. This harks back to `the Songs of Innocence' `A Cradle Song' where the `infants smiles are his own smiles'. The infant is free to act out its desires as it pleases. It is unbound, untainted. Blake's concern is for the pallid and repressed, subjugated future that awaits the children who must `nurse unacted desires' and emotions in this new world of industrialisation. Despairingly, this is restated again in `the mind-forg'd manacles' of `London'. The imagery of the lambs of the `Songs of Innocence' `Introduction' is developed in `the Chimney Sweeper' into the image of `Little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head, that curl'd like a lamb's back, was shav'd'.
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. Good morning/afternoon ladies, I am William Blake, not Wordsworth; Blake, a romantic poet. I was born in 1757, in the Soho district of London, England. I was not only a poet but also a painter and a printmaker. Since I was young, I had these beautiful ‘visions’. I saw a God’s head appear in a window and a tree filled with angels. You may think I was insane but really, I was not. I lived in the Romantic Period, the period of free emotion, adopting individuality and engrossing oneself in nature. We, the Romantic poets, wanted to change the ideas of the previous period, the Enlightenment. We were sick of the industrial society and the want of reasons and purposes behind everything. We believed that nature and emotion were the places in which one found spiritual truth. The idea of engrossing oneself in the natural and beautiful, or in some cases the natural and frightening as in the poem ‘The Tyger’, is distinctly romantic.
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...
Over the years, the classic man saving the helpless woman routine, has evolved into a more feminist view where the woman saves the man, for example .
LaGuardia, Cheryl. "WILLIAM BLAKE: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE." Library Journal 128.9 (2003): 140. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 13 July 2011.