Pre-Romantics

1. Pre-Romantics William Blake 1757 - 1827

2. Opening Questions: • Revisiting Archetypes. What are they again? • Plot patterns, character types or ideas with emotional power and widespread appeal. Critics argue that archetypes reveal in symbolic form universal truths about humanity. Blake often expressed such archetypes like in the paired poems we are going to read. QW: What are the symbols generally associated with innocence? Which ones tend to be associated with experience and knowledge?

3. William Blake’s Interesting life • At the age of four, Blake looked out the window and started screaming because he claimed to have seen God. • At age eight, while walking in the fields, he saw a tree filled with angels. To some, these “spells” may have been serious cause for concern, but his parents were followers of a Swedish mystic, so they saw this “gift of vision” to be something that should be nurtured and revered.

4. William Blake’s Interesting life • His father was a poor Londoner who owned a hosiery shop; Blake was educated at home and found his own way into art and literature • Avid reader, expressed a desire to be a painter, so he was sent to drawing school, was apprenticed to an engraver • Formal study didn’t last long though; he dropped out and set up his own print shop. He spent most of his life eking out a living as an engraver, barely making enough to support himself and his wife, Catherine

5. The art and poetry combine • Because of his artistic training, it’s not surprising that he wrote a highly visual brand of poetry. He illustrated a variety of works (Dante’s Divine Comedy, the Book of Job, Milton’s Paradise Lost) which were a form of rebellion against the Royal Academy’s admiration for tame, sedate paintings.

6. The art and poetry combine • He engraved his own poetry on metal plates and included highly original designs, and when they were printed, he added tints, usually water color, by hand; these sort of resemble Medieval illuminated manuscripts

7. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • At age 32, he published Songs of Innocence (composed when he was younger) • It explores his favorite subject: the destiny of the human spirit. • He associates “innocence” with the world of children: a world of spontaneity, unbridled energy, a simpler, more basic, rather non-reflective enjoyment of life. • Songs of Experience was published a few years later, and it explores the darker side of life, which he equates with adults, and their recognition of evil and hypocrisy. This world gives in to convention and results in bitter wisdom.

8. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience • He believed that both of these qualities are essential to life: “two contrary states to the human soul” and that pure opposites like these are ultimately false • He wants to overturn these simple terms to find a new vision of life • He also believed that the Neoclassical period was neglecting child-like innocence, perhaps even stifling it • So through looking at the innocent side of our nature, we can gain an intuitive understanding of life and the world.

9. Getting back to the QW… • What are your symbols of innocence? • What are the images/ideas/symbols of experience?