He saw that there could be no innocence if one could not acquire experience and knowledge later. This is also true of the kind of art Blake executed. Engravings are drawings made up of lines. It is not possible to remove the lines and have any art left, because that is what his style art does: it divides blank space. Without the blank space, there can be no lines. Without the lines, there is no art. There is only a blank sheet.
Blake emphasizes the differences between his poems of innocence and poems of experience. Just as Blake could have painted in watercolors, with many colors, many shades, all running together, he could have imbued his poems with "shades of gray." When artists paint with colors, they don't use line. The line is implied as the rooftop meets the sky. But in Blake's etchings, the only way we would see the separation of roof and sky is because Blake drew it as a line. Blake took his poems and boiled the concepts down to their core, eliminating uncertainty and doubt and leaving the images and the ideas as clearly defined as possible. He did the same thing with his art. He was the opposite of an impressionistic painter who might paint a tree by putting small dots on the paper and letting the viewer's eye add the lines. For Blake, the line, the separation between tree and not-tree, drawing and empty space, was important. It was the essence of the tree for him.
In his poems of innocence and experience, he made this very clear by speaking of two muses. For his poems of innocence he spoke of a childlike muse. He includes his theology in these poems, but it is a childlike, innocent view of God as gentle and loving. However, later he...
Thus, Blake presents an explicit condemnation not only of organized religion, but specifically those religions which seek official legitimization and control over non-adherents; considering that the Church of England was (and is) the official religion of England, whose leader simultaneously serves as the head of state, Blake's condemnation of religions and religious adherents who presume to "[govern] the unwilling" must be recognized for the rebellious and almost revolutionary statement
William Blake's "The Lamb" is part of his manuscript for Songs of Innocence (Erdman, 1988, p. 72). As such, there is a light, jubilant tone rendered throughout, which pervades the poem's theme, subject, narrator, and setting. Within this poem, an unidentified narrator directly addresses a lamb. The principle motif that this work revolves about is the time honored conceit of a lamb representing Jesus Christ and the mercy and kindness
William Blake Although he was misunderstood and underappreciated throughout his lifetime, William Blake and his work only truly became influential after his death in 1827 (William Blake, 2014). Although he is best known for his poetry, Blake also created a significant amount of art work and other publications throughout his life. Despite the fact that his work found no profound audience during his life, Williams Blake was nonetheless a visionary, whose
" Because he believed that that creation followed a cosmic catastrophe and a fall of spiritual beings into matter, Blake discusses Gnosticism, a multi-faceted religious movement that has run parallel to mainstream Christianity (Friedlander, 1999). Unlike most other Gnosticizers, Blake sees the world as a wonderful place, but one that would ultimately give way to a restored universe. For Blake, the purpose of creation is as a place for personal growth,
William Blake was never fully appreciated in his own time but is still an influence on literary, political and theological analyses long after his death. While the amount of modern literary criticism that now exists should hold testament to his importance, Blake and his visions, pastoral-like settings and illuminated writings shaped the modern literary canon and paved the way for others. Specifically his works "The Divine Image," its companion poem
WILLIAM BLAKE'S MILTON-TRANSFORMATION The great Romantic poet, William Blake, is known for his revolutionary ideas and his fiery attacks on everything he opposed. His work is usually not very complex in nature but since it is connected with the infinite and discusses some imaginary elements, one needs to read his poems more than once to make sense of them. This is exactly what is required when reading Blake's Milton, a poem
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