Blake AO2 notes on mean 15

London

• “chartered” contrast flow of the river, hightened by consonance - control over things that should not be controlled

• cross stick ‘HEAR’ - poet as prophet

• imagery of entrapment “mind forged manacles” - limiting imagination

• anaphora of “every” - all encompassing suffering

• SF of workers “harlots” “soldiers” “sweepers” - confinement of society, Blake’s critique of how industrialised jobs harm human bodies

• poverty and industrialisation chain us down

The Garden of Love

• use of chapel to attack the nature of organised religion

• tone of melancholy in speaker

• semantic field of restriction “gates” “shut”

• imagery of death replacing beauty of flowers - alluding to the burial of pleasure and natural desires

• priests as agents of oppression

• internal rhyme of “briars” and “desires” tightens this idea of oppression

The chimney sweeper (innocence)

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