City International School - Downtown

Language and Literature HL

SOAIE Critique

Mike Najem

Date of Submission: March 25, 2020

IB Year 1
Earlier critiques of “Songs of Innocence and Experience” by William Blake agreed that in the

innocence section of the book Blake Is capable of exercising pure, untrammeled imagination.

The poet has non-hierarchical, mutual relationship but is soon contaminated by the repressive

effects of society. By contrast, ‘experience' would be identified with the adult world that is

characterized by rules, regulations and rationalism. Which in turn, stifles any capacity for

imaginative creativity, joy and emotional freedom. What is certain is that the majority of critics,

have generally agreed to perceiving innocence as a prior state, giving way to experience. Blake,

however, describes them as ‘the two contrary states of the soul', not successive states.