Augustan & 18thC Literature
17 March’23
William Blake
• Painter and a poet - recognised as poet after 150 years of his death
• Why he wasn’t recognised while living ?
1. Age of reason - but he considered imagination to be all - therefore his notion was
considered wrong - he depicted many pics to criticise his age - Newton with animal
body has a divider crawls on a world map - trying to measure the entire world with a
divider. - this made him unpopular
2. He’s mad - asks random women if they’ve seen fairy’s funeral- he and his wife reading
paradise lost naked with a a helmet
3. Religious convention was different - he says 10 commandments has to be destroyed -
creation of two gods - Oz - God of Old Testament || Unizen - young God of New
Testament - they’re at war - was against the orthodoxy of the church hides the view of
god- landscape
22 March’23
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
~Thomas gray
• It celebrate the death of rude forefathers - uneducated ancestors - the illiterates
• It took so much effort to perfect the poem - 7 years - if one go on polishing polishing polishing
- it reaches the peak - if you aim at perfection you’ll go to the great - it is not possible to attain
perfection in an art.