Romanticism

Romanticism is an intellectual movement in which the protagonist is nature that the poet using his imagination represents describing what he perceives and puring his emotions in his work. The focus of the compositions shifts between reason and emotion and we’re part of nature itself.

William Blake

Blake was born in 1757 and studied in the Royal Academy of Art. Blake is a preromantic and composed two collections of poetries : Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In the songs of innocence Blake depicts the good side of the world and the point of view of a child but in the songs of experience he has a more pessimistic view of reality. like the vision of an adult, and these poems are complementary to one another. One can see the whole reality only if he combines the two views. For Blake without contraries there is no progression so his poems are created around the complementary opposites.

The chimney sweepers- Songs of Innocence

Orphan children were chimney sweepers because they were small enough to be forced up the chimneys but they often died young for the soot they inhaled or because they got stuck in a chimney. The poem wants to point out the condition of the working children in the industrial revolution reality because this reality is horrible. The only way to persevere and survive in this reality for the children is to dream of something better like salvation or to see it as a game like in Life is Beautiful. The poem shifts between light and darkness with a lot of words like white, bright, shine, sun, dark, coffins of black and soot. The narrator talks about Tom Dacre a child that works as a chimney sweeper and that is compared wih a lamb because they are both innocent and both will be sacrificed.

The Lamb- Songs of Innocence

The Lamb has a mirror in the Tyger. It starts with the question of who made the lamb. The lamb represents Jesus Christ so purity before contamination. Lamb as child so someone pure and innocent it’s our innocent side that resembles harmony. Blake as child and lamb because he has imagination and can reshape the world and see the beauty in it.

The Tyger- Songs of Experience

The Tiger is the mirror of the Lamb because it lets us know that its creator is the same one of the Lamb. The tiger represents the disruption of harmony, the sublime, it ha strength, power, danger. The tiger is the fierce side of us humans and it complements the Lamb. The creator of the tiger is an overreacher and we decscern that thanks to the repetitions of dare and the presence of the myths of Icarus and Prometheus. A lot of words are about danger and darkness such as burning, fearful, night, fire, dread, deadly. The creation of the tiger seems like a myth or the creation of a monster in a lab. The stanza with eye-symmetry does not rhyme because it brings out the disruption of rhythm and harmony

London- Songs of Experience

London describes how the poet perceives the streets of the slums and the commercial side of London. It speaks of hopelessness and gloom, it talks about soldires at war, harlots at work and the working class wary and full of woe.