Interpretive Essay 5
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Submit an essay by e-mail on the following topic. You may make your essay an integral part of an e-mail message, or you may send it as an attachment in Word or WordPerfect. In the subject line of your message write Essay on Blake.
Write an essay of one page, single spaced, or longer if you wish, in which
you demonstrate that Blake makes use of setting and characters of a
fantastic, mythical, and other-worldly sort in Visions of the Daughters of
Albion. Announce your purpose at the beginning of your essay. Be sure to
summarize the plot, such as it is, and describe the situation that the
characters of the poem find themselves in. Refer to specific passages from
the poem to support your points. You may rely on the explanations of your
instructor and of the editors of our text as much as you wish. You should
generally paraphrase in your own words the passages from the poem and your
instructorâs and editorsâ commentary. You may quote briefly, using MLA
parenthetical documentation. Conclude by giving your opinion as to whether
such settings and characters help or hinder Blake in delivering his intended
theme and message.
The following may help you write your essay:
The core of the assignment is this: Write an essay of about one page, single
spaced, in which you demonstrate that Blake makes use of setting and
characters of a fantastic, mythical, and other-worldly sort in Visions of
the Daughters of Albion.
If the setting and characters of this poem are fantastic, that means they
are not of the real world, but are of an imaginary creation from Blake's
mind. If they are mythical, it means they remind us of myths like those of
the ancient Greeks, depictions of gods and goddesses and strange, fantastic
things that the ancient Greeks believed were real but we don't. Blake of
course is creating his own private mythology rather than alluding to the
mythology of ancient Greece. If setting and characters are other-worldly,
that means they strike us as belonging to a world not like that we know
everyday.
Having read the poem carefully, proceed to summarize it, tell what has
happened to the characters, tell what they are doing at the present moment
of the poem, and then comment on the ways in which all this is fantastic,
mythical, and otherworldly, that is, of the ways in which it does not remind
us of things in this world (even though Blake meant us to apply it to the
status of women and black slaves in the real world).
