William Blake AO5

Component 1: Blake's Poetry AO5

George N. - The Chimney Sweeper (I)

George Norton: “Tom’s dream functions like the workings of ideology”

Carol R.

Carol Rumens: “The effect of innocence on experience is less one of mockery than moral complication”

Nicholas M. - The Lamb

Nicholas Marsh: ‘Biblical lambs are also symbols of suffering, sacrific and redemption’

The Tyger & Earth's Answer

“Without complexity (the more dangerous and intimidating side of the world) a work of art won’t be fully honest and authentic”

Simon M. - “In the ideal world…”

Simon Mold: “In the ideal world of the songs of innocence, it is indeed often the child who leads.”

Ross W. - “(aspects of) Christianity are…”

Ross Wilson: “(Aspects of) Christianity are reduced or deformed versions - that rely upon suffering.”

Nicholas M. - The Chimney Sweeper (E)

Nicholas Marsh: “The church and state enables them (the parents) to absolve their consciences”

Raymond W. - Earth’s Answer

Raymond Williams: “[Blake] criticised his materialistic society for blunting imagination.”

Linda F. - London

Linda Freeman: “People make their own graves, Blake insists, when they refuse to open their minds.”

John H.

John Higgs: “(Not allowing contraries to exist) would result in a static, unchanging world devoid of joy or surprise.”

Brendan C. - Intro to Innocence

Brendan Cooper: “Perhaps the conversion of artistic feeling into words itself is a loss of innocence.”

‘Nature [is] closely intertwined with both childhood and Blake’s conception of innocence’

Linda F. - The Chimney Sweeper (I)

Linda Freedman: “(The narrator is) unable to comprehend the world he finds himself in, (making) innocence a much more frightening state than experience.”

George N. - The Chimney Sweeper (I)

George Norton: “Religion is active on children’s oppression because it makes them promises about the after life rather than dealing with injustices on earth.”

The Garden of Love - passage

‘The poem makes the psychological passage from childhood innocence to adult experience.’

The Garden of Love - organised religion

‘The poem equates the fall not with sin, but with organised religion itself.’

John G. - The Tyger

John Grant: “Nothing in the poem is ‘obviously affirmative”

Linda F. - The Chimney Sweeper poems

Linda Freedman: “Issues of both social criticism and organised religion both as ‘manifestations of the same fundamental problem of blinkered perception.”

Brendan Cooper - Ecchoing Green

‘Nature is seen here as a gateway to spirituality’

Mold - The Lamb

‘[The speaker has] a God given voice’

‘The Little Boy Lost’

‘The child represents the human spirit seeking the conventional ‘promised’ God, which is non-existent’

Brendan Cooper - Nurse’s song (i)

‘Childhood is seen as a time of happiness, freedom and profound oneness with the natural environment’

Nicholas Marsh - Nurse’s song (i)

‘A paradise of intimate human connection and happiness’

Nurse’s Song (experience)

‘[the children represent] the expression of a potential freedom that [the nurse] cannot bear to contemplate, and which she must repress at all costs’

Nicholas Marsh - Earth’s Answer

‘Earth could throw off God’s punishment by her own efforts if only she had the will to do so.’

Nicholas Marsh - Holy Thursday (experience)

‘The voice in this poem is outraged and speaks with revolutionary anger’

Nicholas Marsh - Experience poems

‘leaving us feeling both indignant and unease’

The Sick Rose

‘Corrosive sexual guilt’

Damrosch - The Sick Rose

‘The Rose can also symbolise Britain’

The Garden of Love - Love

‘Love […] is presented as something innate and fundemental to being human, yet it is under threat from the dogma of organised religion.’

Nicholas Marsh - London

‘The imagery suggests that mental imprisonment... [is] just as much a prison as...iron bars’

Infant Sorrow

‘Existence is inseparable from suffering’

The lamb

‘For Blake, nature is closely intertwined with his conception of innocence’

Bloom- The Sick Rose

‘a ruthless economy of 34 words’