2.1.9: William Blake (1757-1827)
- Page ID
- 82975
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William Blake (1757-1827)
Selected Poems British Romanticism "To see a world in a grain of sand" opens Blake's "Auguries of Innocence." More than any other Romantic poet, Blake's poems demand the use of the imagination and the willing suspension of disbelief (see Coleridge). For William Blake, from a young age, saw the world differently than his fellow human beings. The young poet, engraver, and painter saw the divine in various forms, such as in visions of angels and departed souls; he enjoyed a genius that many thought bordered on madness. Undaunted by public opinion, Blake espoused his prophetic visions of God, of Heaven and Hell, and of the human being's place in the realms of mysticism and God's place in the human mind. In his epic poem Jerusalem, Blake writes,
I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination.
- Discuss the "mind-forged manacles" in Blake's "London."
- How does Blake convict organized religion in his "Holy Thursday" poems?
- Discuss the distinct speaker voices in the two "Chimney Sweeper" poems.
- Compare the representation of a divine creator in "The Lamb" and "The Tyger."