london

“chartered street”

• links to themes: HUMAN POWER AND CORRUPTION, OPPRESSION AND INEQUALITY

• Chartered connotes how the streets are effectively owned and controlled by the wealthy

  • Links to the wider manipulation and extortion of the lower class within a feudal system by their 'superior' counterparts

“in every infant’s cry of fear”

• links to themes: HUMAN POWER AND CORRUPTION, POWER OF NATURE

• Fear is juxtaposed with the concept of infantile innocence, allegorically emphasising the damaging reversal of nature that events such as the Industrial Revolution cause on London and its environment

“black’ning church appalls”

• links to themes: HUMAN POWER AND CORRUPTION

• 'black'ning church' is Blake's acknowledgement of the consequential impacts of the Industrial Revolution

  • AO3 - Smoke and air pollution stained buildings murky grey colours during the Industrial Revolution

• 'black'ning' church' also denotes the intrinsic Biblical imagery present within the poem, the colour black used to connote immorality and deviation from faith

  • Blake is criticising the moral decay of the Church of England, reinstating his wider criticism of organised religion

“blights with plagues the marriage hearse”

• links to themes: HUMAN POWER AND CORRUPTION, OPPRESSION AND INEQUALITY

• Blake juxtaposes the sense of new beginnings in marriage with the finality of death and the morose imagery of the hearse

structure

• dramatic monologue

• conversational tone

  • Blake wanted a poem to be accessible due to its key themes

• cyclical structure

  • 1st + 2nd stanza = impact on people

  • 3rd stanza = examines source of suffering

  • 4th stanza = impact on people

    • suggests suffering is infinite due to human corruption

• utilises iambic tetrameter

  • shows Blake’s order and control

AO3

• written in 1792

• ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

  • William Blake was writing during the Romantic Movement who lived in London most his life

  • Blake had seen the moral and environmental corruption of London due to greed and inequality

• William wrote in simple language, to make his poetry more accessible

• Blake stood against the oppression of women, evidenced with how he educated his wife to become literate and how she eventually became his businesses partner

  • this made Blake be considered to have radical political views

  • this poem being written during the French revolution is a symbol of how this political movement bolstered hope for radicals as it demonstrated that disenfranchised and oppressed populations could still cause political and social reform