William Blake
1757-1827
Also a British Romantic Writer
Like Coleridge
These are Blake’s illustrations!
(Except for the portrait)
A Few Tidbits about Blake
- Virtually unknown in his lifetime
- Rejected organized religion but not spirituality or Jesus
- Believed that God existed in all of us—in our imaginations
- Believed in the equality of races and genders
- Rejected the idea that the soul is pure and the body is sinful, and rejected the idea that the body and soul were separate
- Had Visions…
Blake’s Visions
- When he was four, he said he saw God in a tree out his window—Blake screamed
- At eight, he claims to have seen a tree filled with angels
- Had conversations with his dead brother that were as real to him as the classmate who would be sitting next to you if this were not an online class
Writes The Songs of Innocence and Experience
- These poems depict, according to Blake, “the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul” [sic].
- Speakers in the Songs of Innocence are childlike.
- Songs of Experience depicts the fallen world we perceive through our senses.
- Blake goes on after these works to produce writings that suggest that our imaginations can take us beyond both these worlds.
- Blake suggests that we live in an imperfect world because we fail to imagine what this world could be.
Blake’s “Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun”
This is the painting that actor Ralph Fiennes’s character eats in the Silence of the Lambs prequel, Red Dragon.
Blake’s “Last Supper”
“Satan Inflicting Boils on Job”
Blake’s “Jacob’s Ladder”
From Blake’s “Book of Job”
Blake and Dante
Blake was more than a poet…
- …he illustrated his poems. Some famous ones follow on the next two slides.
Terms for Speaking about Poetry
- Imagery: All the images of the poem taken together. More than just decoration—the meaning in a poem springs from the images taken as a whole
- Symbol: A visible object or action that suggests some further meaning in addition to itself
What is a Symbol?
- Something present (in the poem) whose meaning depends on something absent (outside the poem)
- A symbol is something itself (i.e, a lamb) that suggests something deeper (i.e., a lamb as a symbol of Christ in Christian religions)
Isn’t a Symbol just like a Metaphor?
- Not exactly—Though both metaphors and symbols ask us to make associations between two things, a symbol is both literal and figurative.
- A basic distinction—a metaphor means something other than what it literally is, while a symbol means both what it literally is and something more.
Isn’t a Symbol just like a Metaphor?
- Metaphor—one object defines a quality of another object.
- Symbol—an object stands for/embodies a moral truth, abstract idea, or emotional state.
- A metaphor evokes an object in order to illustrate an idea or a quality, whereas a symbol embodies the idea or quality.
- Another definition describes a symbol as a metaphor with one term/object left open.
Ways to Analyze Blake
- Realize that Blake is not using these poems to say “innocence = good” ; “experience = bad”. It is more complicated than that.
- Innocence lacks knowledge, and for Blake the absence of knowledge cannot be a perfect state. Experience gains knowledge, but loses the innocence which is not perfect either for him.
- His poems ask us to use our imaginations to look for a world beyond this either/or scenario.
- Our imaginations, Blake believes, can take us there.