Reader's Log 5B
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The Romantic Era, 1785-1830:
Pay particular attention to the following passages from the editors’ introduction: American and French Revolutions, p. 1314; Industrial Revolution, p. 1315; Poetic Theory and Poetic Practice, pp. 1318-1327.
For your convenience, both Neoclassical and Romantic traits are briefly summarized below. Few poets will exemplify all the traits of their era. Remember that Romantic traits had emerged among 18th century British society while Neoclassical traits were still very much in evidence. Understand, too, that you will see some Neoclassical traits enduring throughout the fully blossomed Romantic period.
Neoclassical traits:
(1) Abundant allusion to classical literature; (2) satire and comedy aimed at correction; (3) didactic and expository poetry; (4) heroic verse; (5) respect for reason and a rational control of the passions; (6) distrust of fantasy and enthusiasm; (7) emphasis upon social standards and the status quo; (8) poets representative of middle and upper class society; (9) disesteem for medieval civilization.
Romantic traits:
(1) Emphasis upon the individual, especially the gifted individual; (2) support of revolution and social reform: (3) revolt against the confinement of heroic verse and traditional poetic diction; (4) respect for ordinary people and the disadvantaged; (5) poets defined as geniuses alienated from respectable society; (6) veneration for and worship of nature; (7) a sense that civilization, especially as expressed by city life, corrupts and depraves; (8) emphasis upon intuition, imagination, spontaneity, and impulse rather than upon reason; (9) fascination with medieval culture; (10) preoccupation with death; (11) attraction to the visionary and the occult.
William Blake (1757-1827), pp. 1344-1388.
Read the editors’ introduction, pp. 1344-1347. Blake is generally recognized as one of the six major Romantic poets, of equal rank with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. His reputation, however, was made, not in his own time, but during the early decades of the 20th century. He is noted both as a poet and painter. In both media, he produced uncanny, startling pieces that puzzle yet rivet the attention of the reader and viewer. He is the prime example of the Romantic poet and painter as a visionary creator of fantastic, eerie landscapes and figures.
A printer and engraver by profession, Blake eked out a meager living for himself and his wife printing and engraving. (Engraving was the art of carving or etching images into metal plates from which they could then be printed on paper.) Blake also had a gift for both painting and poetry, though he made little money through either of those media. His poetry; as he produced it, was a visual as well as verbal experience because he inscribed the text of his poems printed on pages fancifully adorned by engraved, hand-painted images. Obviously, he could produce few copies by such a labor intensive method. In his later years, he turned entirely to painting.
He grew up a Christian and was versed in the Bible and the grand Christian epics of Dante and Milton. Yet, possessed of a unique, unconventional mind, he evolved into an arcane spirituality fed by visions and fantasies. His early poetry reflected the familiar world around him in England of the late 18th century, detailing both its beauties and its evils. He sympathized deeply with the poor and sensed the injustice of the established social order, showing himself a typical Romantic in this. His later poems were set in a mythical world of his own creation. There he dramatized through allegorical figures his contrary opinions upon established notions of good and evil and an apocalyptic purification of the world that he foresaw. These long poems are obscure and require more than a casual reading. You can rely on the helpful explanations of our editors in studying the samples in our text, keeping in mind that other scholars might well differ in their interpretation of the poems.
The few black and white reproductions of a few of the illuminated pages on which the poems in our text originally appeared do little justice to the originals. (The process of decorating a page of text with visual images is called illumination.) It is astonishing how visual Blake’s self-printed books were. In appearance, the decorative images, hand painted in a variety of colors, far overshadow the text. As for Blake’s paintings, in 1984 your instructor happened into the Tate Gallery in London by chance and discovered there a large exhibit of them. They seemed, all of them, grim and far removed from everyday reality, yet absolutely fascinating, being suggestive of deep and uncanny meanings within the human psyche. The same may be said for Blake’s obscure poetry.
Web Site for Blake’s Paintings and Illuminations:
A gratifying selection of Blake’s paintings and illuminated pages are available on Web sites. You may wish to visit the site listed below. Also type William Blake into the search box of your browser and explore other sites.
The following URL is an excellent site in that it is very complete and detailed. However, it requires some patience on your part if you wish to explore the relationship between Blake's engraving and poetry extensively.
For convenience, you may wish to follow my directions here on how to access and view a copy of Blake's combined Songs of Innocence and Of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul published in 1794. You will be able to see each page of the book with its colored image and its engraved (rather than typeset) text. (Keep in mind that the word illuminated or illumination, when applied to a book, means that the book has engravings or other art accompanying the text.)
William Blake Archive home page > (Choose server) US Home > The William Blake Archive > Works in Archive > Works in the William Blake Archive > Illuminated Books: electronic origin > William Blake Archive Index of Illuminated Books > Songs of Innocence and Experience Copy C
You will be able to view color reproductions of the sequential pages of Copy C of this book. Note that the poems have been engraved, rather than printed, on each page.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul, pp. 1349-1364. Read the editors’ note # 1, bottom of p. 1349. Read the poems. Contrast the illuminations for the title page on p. 1350 with that on p. 1355. You may wish to visit the Web site on this book named above, where a different image accompanies each poem.
READER’S LOG: The Chimney Sweeper, pp. 1352-1353 and pp. 1357-1358. Compare the two versions of this poem. Impoverished parents often sold unwanted boys into servitude as chimney sweepers in London. Their duty involved climbing from fireplace to roof through tall, sooty chimneys with a brush. Their hours were long and their food and living conditions spare. Many died of consumption and other diseases. Offer your opinion in the box below as to whether, in the first of these poems, Blake is being sincere or ironic in elaborating on the religious consolation of a better Afterlife for the dead boy.
READER’S LOG: Holy Thursday, pp. 1353-1354 and p. 1357. Before comparing the versions, read the editors’ note # 1, bottom of p. 1353. In the first poem, the children seen on Holy Thursday seem happy and beautiful. In your own words, describe how they appear in the second poem.
READER’S LOG: Nurse’s Song, pp. 1354 and p. 1358. In the first poem, the children’s nurse or caretaker finds great joy in hearing the sound of playing children. Explain in your own words what her response is in the second poem.
READER’S LOG: Infant Joy, p. 1354, and Infant Sorrow, p. 1363. In the first poem, the newborn child inspires joy in the heart of the speaker. In your words summarize the response of the newborn child and its parents in the second poem.
READER’S LOG: The Divine Image, p. 1353, and A Divine Image, p. 1364. The first poem declares that a merciful and loving God dwells within the human soul. What traits characterize the "Human Form Divine" in the second poem?
READER’S LOG. The Lamb, p. 1351, and The Tyger, pp. 1359-1360. These are famous, frequently anthologized poems declaring the enigma of good and evil. The first poem emphasizes the mild, lamb-like qualities which Christians often associate with God. Taking a tiger as its central symbol for aggressive evil, the second poem asks, but does not answer, a troubling question. Quote a line or two from The Tyger expressing this question.
Visions of the Daughters of Albion, pp. 1369-1377. Read the editors’ introduction, pp. 1369-1370. Cast is in iambic heptameter (fourteen syllables per line), this poem is the text from another of Blake’s illuminated books, something of a simple drama or stage tableau. Despite its references to Albion, a traditional term for England, and to America, it is chiefly set in a never-never world and involves mythical characters of Blake’s own invention. It begins with a brief narrative in which Oothoon, its female protagonist, declares her sexual freedom and sets out to join her lover Theotormon. On the way she is accosted and raped by Bromion. The jealous and powerful Theotormon responds by binding both the victim and the rapist back-to-back on a cave. From that brief beginning, the poem devolves as a series of monologues spoken chiefly by Oothoon. The characters also include something like a chorus, the Daughters of Albion (representing the women of England), who may be understood to chant their repeated lamentation in concert. The poem therefore has little suspenseful action and draws its interest chiefly from its statement of Blake’s radical criticism of sexual inhibition, slavery, and the suppression of women. In both its unconventional form and in its contradiction of late 18th century views on chastity, slavery, and the status of women, this poem shows itself to be fully of the Romantic Era. Keep in mind that the general ambiguity of the poem could easily allow for other interpretations as well.
READER’S LOG. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, plate 1, lines 1-23, pp. 1371-1372. Read these lines carefully. This vision opens with a lamentation of the Daughters of Albion, whom we may understand as the women of England. Their lamentation is directed toward America where, as Blake is keenly aware, there is an ironic contrast between its stated ideals of freedom and equality and the fact of black enslavement. Next Oothoon wanders restlessly, plucking a flower and placing it between her breasts in expression of a frank sexuality. As she wings toward her beloved, she is intercepted and raped by Bromion, who proceeds to boast that he is the possessor of America and its "swarthy children of the sun." If the raped Oothoon represents both women as a gender and black slaves as a race, what may we say Bromion represents?
READER’S LOG. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, plate 2, lines 1-30, p. 1372. Considering Oothoon as impure and guilty as Bromion, her lover Theotormon binds them back to back in a cave. Though here and later he laments vastly, he refuses to forgive Oothoon. Your editors interpret him as representing conventional English morality which severely limits the boundaries of sexual expression. What is Oothoon’s attitude on the question of her impurity and guilt?
READER’S LOG. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, plate 5, lines 3-32, pp. 1374-1375. Oothoon addresses God the Creator as Urizen, a "mistaken Demon of heaven," implying, as your editors say in note # 1, that the conventional Christian view of God is wrong. Oothoon proceeds to blame this false interpretation of God for the suppression of joy and for the spawning of misery. A specific evil is named in lines 21-32 and explained by your editors’ note # 3. Quote several lines that express this evil.
READER’S LOG. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, plate 6, lines 1-20, pp. 1375-1376. Oothoon’s lamentation, now taking on the tone of a prophetic utterance from the Old Testament, continues. As the editors’ note # 4 asserts, she contrasts the innocent sexual passion of an infant with the hypocritical dissembling of a woman who has been taught modesty. Restate in your own words the sentence comprising lines 10-13.
READER’S LOG. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, plate 7, lines 1-30. p. 1376. In this eloquent passage, Oothoon praises a liberal expression of sexuality. Blake here comes close to endorsing free love, the concept that sexual intercourse should not be bound by conventions of marriage and society but should proceed upon the natural attraction of a couple for each other. Although the large majority of the English rejected free love as a gross immorality, a significant number of intellectuals endorsed it in the Romantic Era. (You will remember that Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin felt compelled to violate their own doctrine of free love and marry when they discovered she was pregnant.) Quote several lines from lines 1-30 which would appear to endorse, if not free love, at least a frank and sensuous sexuality.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, pp. 1377-1388. Read the editors’ introduction carefully, pp. 1377-1378. This piece, which consists of brief poetic and lengthy prose parts, shows Blake’s customary ambiguity and incoherence (incoherence being the quality of moving from one topic to another without warning or transition). Blake again shows himself to be heavily influenced by Christian tradition yet imposes his own very individualistic and unorthodox interpretation upon it. And once again Blake creates a never-never world in which devils and angels speak and contend. He here interprets traditional Christianity as having defined energy and passion as evil and reason and self restraint as good. He wishes to dispute this partisan taking of sides between these two contraries, his view being that true goodness consists of neither a rejection of one side or the other, nor even a reconciliation of them, but rather a tolerance of both within the happy, creative individual (thus making for the "marriage" of heaven and hell). To accomplish this end he alternates between speaking in his own voice (he being a young man who has visions of otherworldly scenes) and in the voice of a heroic devil. Keep in mind that for Blake this devil represents, not true evil, but evil as it is wrongly conceived by conventional Christians.
READER’S LOG: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 3, pp. 1378-1379. Read the editors’ note # 3 on the Swedish theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Blake’s work is a parody (a mocking imitation) of the otherworldly visions of Swedenborg. Swedenborg’s visions were preoccupied with the Apocalypse and Second Coming. Blake is not altogether insincere in alluding to himself as a 33-year-old Christ, beginning his ministry since he conceives of himself, a poet-prophet, in the role of correcting the spiritual misapprehensions of his age. Blake ends by bluntly stating his view of contraries. Quote the three very brief paragraphs which conclude this section at the top of p. 1379.
READER’S LOG: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, A Memorable Fancy, pp.1382-1383. Notice that there are four sections with the subtitle, A Memorable Fancy. Note # 1, p. 1380, explains that these sections are parodies on Swedenborg’s visions of the eternal world. In them, Blake speaks in his own voice, relating visions and visits to heaven and hell. He is not simply making fun of Swedenborg, however. He is also setting forth, in his usual ambiguous and evocative way, his views on the true nature of good and evil. In the section on pp. 1382-1383, Blake recounts a heavenly visit with the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. In the opening lines he asks Isaiah whether he truly had a vision of God. In your own words, state what Isaiah tells him.
READER’S LOG: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, plate 16, p. 1384. Read this passage on the lower half of p. 1384, then go to the second paragraph of the editors’ introduction, p. 1377, and you will see that this passage is crucial to the interpretation that the editors give to this poem. Also of interest is the brief paragraph in the middle of this passage which begins, "Is not God alone the Prolific...?" Quote Blake’s reply to that question. This is a typical Romantic view of God.
