T J 18 (335)

Return to ENGL 335B, British Romantic Literature.

Links
The Blake Archive (click here for access to all of Blake's illuminated prints)

Eighteenth Century Audio (click here for 20-odd audio files of poems from SI/SE)

Blake on the web (click here for an annotated list of the best sites out there)

Quotes from the Longman
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience From The Longman Anthology of British Literature, 3rd ed.—Vol. 2A

“‘Innocence’ and ‘Experience’ are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton’s existential-mythic states of ‘Paradise’ and ‘the Fall.’ Blake’s categories are modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronological story that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a time and a state of protected ‘innocence,’ but it is a qualified innocence, not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through ‘experience,’ a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes” (156).

“These contraries [Innocence and Experience] are not simple oppositions, however. Unlike Milton’s narrative of the Fall from Paradise, Blake shows either state of soul possible at any moment. Some children, even infants, have already lost their innocence through a soiling contact with the world; some adults, particularly joyously visionary poets, seem able to retain vitality even in experience. Moreover, the values of ‘Innocence’ and ‘Experience’ are themselves complex. At times, an innocent state of soul reflects a primary, untainted vitality of imagination; at other times, Blake, like Mary Wollstonecraft, implicates innocence with dangerous ignorance and vulnerability to oppression” (157).

“In rhetorical structure, the songs may present an innocent singer against dark ironies that a more experienced reader, alert to social and political evil, will grasp. But just as trickily, experience can also trap a soul in its own ‘mind-forg’d manacles.’ Blake’s point is not that children are pure and adults fallen, or that children are naïve and adults perspicacious. Contrary possibilities coexist, with different plays and shades of emphasis in different poems” (157).

“These values are often further complicated by the illustrations that accompany and often frame the song-texts. Sometimes these sustain the singer’s tone and point of view. . ., and sometimes. . . they offer an ironic counter-commentary” (157).

Other Resources
Image from Blake's art.

http://files.giltradutor.webnode.com.br/200000120-a4df0a5daf/william_blake_jacobs_ladder.jpg

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