The Violation of William Blakes Songs of Innocence Essay

The Violation of Blakes Songs of Innocence Abstract: William Blakes Songs of Innocence contains a group of poetic works that the artist conceptualized as entering into a dialogue with each other and with the works in his companion work, Songs of Experience. He also saw each of the poems in Innocence as operating as part of an artistic whole creation that was encompassed by the poems and images on the plates he used to print these works. While Blake exercised a fanatical degree of control over his publications during his lifetime, after his death his poems became popular and were encountered without the contextual material that he intended to accompany them. William Blake was probably more concerned than any other†¦show more content†¦He claimed that the essentials of the method had been communicated to him in a dream by his brother, Robert, two years after Roberts death (Doyle 563). Songs of Innocence was the first of Blakes major works, which he printed with this process (Keynes 11). Innocence was first published in 1789, although copies of drafts of the poems are extant from as early as 1784 (Keynes 9). The poems in Innocence are among the most frequently studied and collected of Blakes poems, although the single most frequently anthologized poem of Blakes -- and the most frequently published poem in the English language -- is The Tyger, from Innocences companion book Songs of Experience (Hilton 6). Unlike Wordsworth (who spent more than fifty years writing four complete versions of The Prelude, ranging from two to fourteen books, without ever publishing the book) and Coleridge (who published five different texts of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner between 1798 and 1817), Blake rarely revised a poem once it had been printed. Blake himself wrote the following about his plates in The Caverns of the Grave Ive seen: Re-engravd Time after Time, Ever in their youthful prime, My designs unchangd remain.(Frye 6) Northrop Frye argues that these lines, in conjunction with the manuscript evidence remaining of the original editions of Blakes books, mean that Blake intended for the engraved poems to constitute a sort of canon of poems whichShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Songs Of Innocence By William Blake1787 Words   |  8 PagesWilliam Blake, an unconventional writer and artist in Romantic England, was known best for his unique printing method and claim to supernatural visions. In 1789, Blake published the â€Å"Songs of Innocence,† a collection of poems attributed with an innocent, romantic viewpoint, as the title indicates. One of the poems, â€Å"The Divine Image,† was used to identify the nature of God in man. â€Å"The Divine Image† speaker identifies the Mercy, Love, Peace, and Pity found in humans to be truly divine and of GodRead MoreEssay on The True, the Beautiful and the Good1967 Words   |  8 PagesThree Elements in Romanticism To start, the concept of romanticism must be introduced, because it has always been the key word throughout this class’ discussions. During the period between the end of 18th century and 1830s, there were frequent violations going on in European. The darkness in politics and the inequality in society made people feel that the capitalism, which was established after the French Revolution, was far less ideal than what had been depicted by those enlightenment thinkersRead MoreWilliam Blake And The French Revolution2017 Words   |  9 Pagesand that, although William Blake was universally considered to be a madman in his time, his work as a poet and painter is widely recognised as a revolutionary visionary (Altizer, Pg. 33). It is clear that, had the French Revolution not happened, Blake probably would have been a mere poet and water colourist, with a turn to eccentricity. The French Revolution influenced many people all over the globe, including the radicals in London, to push and demand for immediate change. William Blake, a radicalRead MoreStudy Guide Literary Terms7657 Words   |  31 Pagescharity, greed, or en vy. Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning 4. allusion- A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work. T. S. Eliot, in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock alludes (refers) to the biblical figure John the Baptist in the line Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, . . . In the New Testament, John the Baptists head was presented to King Herod