ENGLISH LITERATURE IV 1

WILLIAM BLAKE (1757 - 1827)

 He also wrote on London on a different way.

 The poems which has been seen in class has rhyme but most of his poems has no rhyme.
 He was born in London in a working-class environment (his father was a haberdasher(=tender, small
merchant)) humble social background
 He lived in London throughout his life (except a brief period between 1800-1803 on the coast of Sussex).
 He wrote about the nature and the Lake district. He was and urban person. He uses the element of nature
as symbols of something else.
 He had no formal education (schooling) except in art: at 14 he became an apprentice with the important
engraver James Basire.
 Engraving was something close to a photographer.
 He read widely on his own, vast quantities of philosophical, religious, and occult writings, including:
Francis Bacon, John Locke, George Berkeley. The Bible (you found so many thing to write about)
The Swedish philosopher, scientist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg who wrote about visions with angels.

THINKING

 He was against empiricism. He came to oppose British Empiricism, ie, the belief that the main (possible only)
source of genuine knowledge is individual experience through the senses.
 He came to align himself with European rationalism (human mind is more important).
(Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and later Kant) ie, the belief that the human mind has the ability to shape reality.

 Blake was not only a poet but also an engraver and painter.
 The profession of engraver was profitable at the time: illustration for books (diagrams for anatomy books,
illustrations for other poets), reproduction of portraits, ornaments or costumes for contemporary magazines,
etc.
 He started in 1789 a new method of publication with Songs of Innocence:
 First he engraved every page with both texts and design then he water-colored every page.
Plates = engraving + water-color
 In 1794 these poems appeared combined with another set of poems. The whole collection was
called: Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

BLAKE´S WORK

 Songs of Innocence and Experience (his most accessible work, and the only poems with traditional metre
and rhyme)
 The so called “prophetic books”: The Marriage of Heaven
 Some writing in prose
 Two major traditions are combined and transformed in Songs of Innocence:
a) the pastoral tradition of classical literature (Theocritus in Greek; Virgil in Latin)
(very musical shepherds, playing instruments in an idealized countryside)
b) Moral books for children (in prose or verse), a commercial success in the 18 th century.
Charles Wesley´s Hymns for Children (1763)
Anna Barbauld´s Hymn in Prose for Children (1781)
 In Songs of Innocence we see the world from a perspective of happiness, self enjoyment and unity
resembling childhood.
 Blake sees nothing sinful in childhood.
 These popular moral books for children sometimes hesitate between sin and innocence in their conception
of children, as in the following hymn from Wosley´s collection: compare this hymn to Blake´s “Infant Joy”
The child should feel unclean and guilty from origin. No matter how innocence he is he is guilty from birth.
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IV 2

O father, I am but a child

My body is made of earth
My nature, alas! Is defiled
And a sinner I was from my birth

INFANT JOY
 The predominant feeling is happiness
 In the illustration on the plate the baby is protected by the flower, but it is worth saying that
the illustrations not always fit or correspond with the poems.
 In Infant Joy there are two speakers in the poem: the baby and the other may be her mother,
the poet, someone else.
 The quotations marks “” are used to indicate that it is the child who is speaking.
 Most of the lexicon in the poem is related to happiness: happy, sweet joy, smile, pretty joy, sing.
 The baby thinks that he is bringing joy into the world.

INFANT SORROW
 Happiness is found no more on this poem
 It is a child describing his birth from a sad perspective focusing on pain and sorrow.
 2 quatrains, rhyme AABB. 4 stresses per line (iambic tetrameter) as in Infant Joy.
It is a ballad stanza except for the rhyming couplet.
 The important thing in the Ballad is that lines 2 and 4 they do rhyme. abab or abcb ( -b-b).
 From the perspective of experience, the little angel is like a devil coming into your life.
 The lexicon are words related to pain and suffering.
 L.1.”groan´d” (=crying out in pain , maybe a reference to giving birth to a baby)
 L.2.”leapt” (=violently)
 The baby describes himself as helpless, naked, piping loud.
 Piping – in the introduction of Songs of Innocence and experience is playing the flute but
here is like screaming.
 This poem concentrates on the negative side.
 Maybe because the father needs to work harder to keep the baby.
 L.7.”bound”(=relate to prison)
 L.6.”struggling”=”striving”= fighting
 L.6.”swaddling bands” = babies were wrapped in clothes, it was something good for the baby. Being wrapped
kept the baby worm and happy (but it is like a prison for him). The little baby feels life like a prisoner, and he
struggles against his clothes. He is tired from screaming and fighting to get out of the clothes.
 End of the poem (= y pensé que lo mejor era refugiarme en el pecho de mi madre)
 L.8.”to sulk” (=refunfuñar) es un verbo negativo
 The baby feels guilty because he feels he is bringing no happines to the family, so he is sad and feels pain.
 The baby is defeated and he gave up by recurring to feed at her mother´s breast.

 In both poems Infant Joy and Infant Sorrow we can hear the voice of these children
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IV 3

INTRODUCTION TO SONGS OF INNOCENCE.

 This is an introduction for a collection of poems for children.
 5 Ballad stanza with 4 stresses- tetrameter
 The quotations mark “” → corespond to the petitions of the boy
 The boy asks the piper 3 petitions: first to play a song about a Lamb, second to add words lyrics to the music
and the third and last he asks the piper to have that in writing – so other children and adults will be able to
read it. The way to keep that song was to write it.
 Repetition of “And I” → Anaphora (=a word or phrase is repeated in successive lines, typically at the
beginning). Anaphora is always used to give emphasis.
 In this case the repetition of “And I” conveys the sense of sequence of actions, because of the amount of
verbs of actions
 L.16.”hollow reed” (=junco hueco)
 L.18.”stain´d” = with color
 Water clear = make ink → hago que el agua clara tenga color
 The speaker in the poem identifies himself as a poet who writes for children.
 He initially appears as a Pan figure (the Greek God of wild nature and rustic music)
 The child on a cloud is inspiration (fitting for a collection of children´s poems)
 The poem moves from music (in stanza 2) to singing , music + words (in stanza 3) to writing in a book (stanzas
4 and 5)
 The piper is the poet.

THE LAMB.

 The lamb is an animal, a soft tender animal. As God´s son Jesus Christ the lamb is associated with innocence,
tenderness and childhood.
 An apostrophe is a speech addressed to an animal or to an inanimate object.
 Both poems ,Lamb and Tyger, are addressed to an animal , in both cases the poet presents a number
of questions.
 In the case of the lamb we know who the speaker is, it is a child.
 The lamb has two parts: question and answer.
 The second half of the poem provides an answer.
 Everything associated with the lamb is beauty: voice, wooly, bright
 Baby Jesus and Jesus the lamb → they both share something that is their names.

THE TYGER.
 The question is the same as in the lamb (who made thee? = What immortal hand …. Symmetry? = ¿Quién
le ha creado?). The question in the lamb is very straightforward, however, in the tyger the same question is
much more roundabout, indirect.
 L.4.“frame”→ required more effort
 “symmetry” → subjects perfection, beauty.
 Could (=pudo) – Dare (=se atreve)
 After four stanzas chances the verb to dare (=braveness)
 The question is not in the technical ability but the braveness (the moral right) to do it.
 At the beginning we have got full sentences, from stanza 3 onwards fragments are used, they are
incomplete sentences (because of rushing, he wants to finish up the sentences quickly)
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IV 4

 The process of creation seems to be the creation of a metal (a smith).

 The tyger is the companion poem to the lamb. It is written in 6 stanzas, the first and last stanzas are
 the same, just a little change. could→ hability, capability meanwhile dare→ braveness and moral
 responsabiltity.

Slight.

 The poem is written in quatrains of trochaic /DÁ da/ tetrameter in rhyming couplets.
 The poem is written in couplets
 The word symmetry breaks the rhyme
 The pairing of the couplets, the predominance of monosyllabic words, and the use of many
plosive sounds (ptk bdg) conveys the sense of hammering on the anvil, the repetitive strokes of
the blacksmith who is shaping the tiger.
 “Tyger! Tyger burning bright” → alliteration, harshness
 After the tiger is described in stanza 2,3 and 4, the speaker now uses the verb ”dare” and asks:
 Whether the creator smiled when seeing the creation. (allusion in genesis, God made as stop after
the creation and saw that it was good). Reference to the Bible.
 Whether the creator can be the same who created the lamb.
 The poem provides no answer ( the reader decides yes or no)
 The tiger is more than an animal; it has been seriously read as a symbol of Satan, Lucifer, and of danger.
Meanwhile the Lamb is a symbol of: Christ, safety and protection.
 Both poems are written in the form of questions.
– The speaker asks the animal about its creator
- In the lamb the answer is clear, but in the tiger the question remains unanswered
 Image of fire in the second stanza. Bellows= fuelles que avivan el fuego
 Speaker getting nervous, scare → seen in not full sentences.
 L.17. as a sign of revellion.

The poem as:

 Evil in the world

 The machinery of war
 The terrifying forces of nature
 The dark side of every human mind
 The industrial revolution
 …