30/11/23
William Blake's Poetry
Context
- ‘Pictor ignotus’ - the unknown painter (40 years after his death)
- He became successful after his death
- Songs of Experience was published 4 years after Innocence
- During the industrial revolution (late 18th, early 19th century writing)
- Industrialism
- He had an apprenticeship with an engraver → lead to his interest in the art
Punctuation in Blake’s poetry
- He has a lack of conventional punctuation - suggesting a sense of freedom. The texts we are
given by AQA are ‘cleaned up’ and a neater version of Blake's initial use of punctuation. He
uses irregular punctuation as a way of challenging norms even within his writing (Alice
Ostricker)
- Link to Emily Dickinson's use of irregular punctuation. She uses dashes a lot, in an
unusually irregular way; possibly a way of stressing particular terms, words, etc. She
seems to use a dash in place of many other punctuations.
Innocence vs Experience
Songs of Innocence and Experience
- “The two contrary states of the human soul”
- Presented on the cover as by innocence there is a bird flying in the sky- the top of the cover
resembles heaven and the bottom “experience”- two people are hunched over almost as if
they are being swept which resembles hell
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Blake)
- “without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love
and Hate, and necessary to human existence.”
- “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind”
Paired poems:
- Divine image and the Human abstract
- The Tyger and The Lamb
- Infant sorrow and Infant joy
- Chimney Sweep x2- one in Songs of Experience and one in Songs of Innocence
- Holy Thursday
- Night/ The little girl lost and The little girl found
‘Innocence’
- Purity, childhood, naivety, lack of sin (prelapsarian), not yet done things wrong, new
beginnings (hope), not yet exposed to hard realities, optimism, idealised, vulnerability.
, ‘Experience’
- Corruption (a corruption of the soul/happiness/ political/ or religious corruption - corruptions
of the institution - postlapsarian - sin, guilt, shame…), faces problems, exploring challenges
in the world, gaining new knowledge (causing you to think differently - might have a
different atmosphere in the poems), abuser or manipulator (might exploit innocence which is
vulnerable), being free in dangerous situations, more action/possibility
Neuroscience in the 17th-19th century
- (Add notes from PowerPoint)
- 1664 - Thomas Willis
- 17th century - Rene Descartes. Rationalist and dualist
- 17th- 19th century (1863) Otto Freidrich Karl Deiters
- Dendron - greek for tree → a tree growing in the human brain (rationalism in
science)
- Link to a poison tree
- Drawings of nerve cells → similar to trees
Peity - religiousness
The French Revolution
- Mrs Brown worksheet
- Significance of freedom and liberty → bringing down the monarchy
Links to the Bible
Blake was interested in the Bible as a poetic source
Passage from Revelations 1:14-17
14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was
as the sun shineth in his strength.
17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the
first and the last
- Links to:
- ‘wool, as white as snow’ → The Lamb, Spring
- ‘his eyes were as a flame of fire’, ‘as if they burned in a furnace’ → Little
Boy Lost: ‘and burned him in a holy place’, The Tyger: ‘tyger tyger burning
bright’, The Little Girl Lost: ‘his eyes of flame’
- ‘His head and his hairs were white like wool’ → Ecchoing Green, A Little
Girl Lost, Earth’s Answer, The Little Black Boy
- ‘In his right hand he had seven stars’ → Introduction to Experience,
Introduction to Innocence,
William Blake's Poetry
Context
- ‘Pictor ignotus’ - the unknown painter (40 years after his death)
- He became successful after his death
- Songs of Experience was published 4 years after Innocence
- During the industrial revolution (late 18th, early 19th century writing)
- Industrialism
- He had an apprenticeship with an engraver → lead to his interest in the art
Punctuation in Blake’s poetry
- He has a lack of conventional punctuation - suggesting a sense of freedom. The texts we are
given by AQA are ‘cleaned up’ and a neater version of Blake's initial use of punctuation. He
uses irregular punctuation as a way of challenging norms even within his writing (Alice
Ostricker)
- Link to Emily Dickinson's use of irregular punctuation. She uses dashes a lot, in an
unusually irregular way; possibly a way of stressing particular terms, words, etc. She
seems to use a dash in place of many other punctuations.
Innocence vs Experience
Songs of Innocence and Experience
- “The two contrary states of the human soul”
- Presented on the cover as by innocence there is a bird flying in the sky- the top of the cover
resembles heaven and the bottom “experience”- two people are hunched over almost as if
they are being swept which resembles hell
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Blake)
- “without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love
and Hate, and necessary to human existence.”
- “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water and breeds reptiles of the mind”
Paired poems:
- Divine image and the Human abstract
- The Tyger and The Lamb
- Infant sorrow and Infant joy
- Chimney Sweep x2- one in Songs of Experience and one in Songs of Innocence
- Holy Thursday
- Night/ The little girl lost and The little girl found
‘Innocence’
- Purity, childhood, naivety, lack of sin (prelapsarian), not yet done things wrong, new
beginnings (hope), not yet exposed to hard realities, optimism, idealised, vulnerability.
, ‘Experience’
- Corruption (a corruption of the soul/happiness/ political/ or religious corruption - corruptions
of the institution - postlapsarian - sin, guilt, shame…), faces problems, exploring challenges
in the world, gaining new knowledge (causing you to think differently - might have a
different atmosphere in the poems), abuser or manipulator (might exploit innocence which is
vulnerable), being free in dangerous situations, more action/possibility
Neuroscience in the 17th-19th century
- (Add notes from PowerPoint)
- 1664 - Thomas Willis
- 17th century - Rene Descartes. Rationalist and dualist
- 17th- 19th century (1863) Otto Freidrich Karl Deiters
- Dendron - greek for tree → a tree growing in the human brain (rationalism in
science)
- Link to a poison tree
- Drawings of nerve cells → similar to trees
Peity - religiousness
The French Revolution
- Mrs Brown worksheet
- Significance of freedom and liberty → bringing down the monarchy
Links to the Bible
Blake was interested in the Bible as a poetic source
Passage from Revelations 1:14-17
14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was
as the sun shineth in his strength.
17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the
first and the last
- Links to:
- ‘wool, as white as snow’ → The Lamb, Spring
- ‘his eyes were as a flame of fire’, ‘as if they burned in a furnace’ → Little
Boy Lost: ‘and burned him in a holy place’, The Tyger: ‘tyger tyger burning
bright’, The Little Girl Lost: ‘his eyes of flame’
- ‘His head and his hairs were white like wool’ → Ecchoing Green, A Little
Girl Lost, Earth’s Answer, The Little Black Boy
- ‘In his right hand he had seven stars’ → Introduction to Experience,
Introduction to Innocence,
