AN ANALYSIS OF WILLIAM BLAKES SONGS
AN ANALYSIS OF WILLIAM BLAKE’S SONGS OF
INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE AS A RESPONSE TO
THE COLLAPSE OF VALUES
TIMOTHY VINES∗
Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience are a much studied part of the
English canon, and for good reason. Blake’s work depicts a quandary that continues to haunt humanity today: the struggle of high-order humanity against the ‘real’ rationality and morals of institutionalised society. This essay seeks to explore both Blake’s literary reaction to the Enlightenment and the response of early readers to his work.
Showing more than ‘the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’,1 Blake’s
Songs of Innocence and Experience reveals a symbolic development which existed in opposition to conventional concepts of modernity and morality. Blake’s writings are an endeavour to loosen or break society’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’,2 which had been created through the edicts of a repressive church and supported by Parliament. Blake pointed to what he saw as the traditional values lost in the late 18th century. Through his poetry Blake fashioned an ideal form of human existence and weighed contemporary society against it.
He found society wanting. Calling for the liberation of human energy and creativity, Blake’s Songs are scathing in their criticism of the prevailing mood of enlightenment rationality, a spirit of the age manifested in Newton, industry and conquest. Blake’s poems serve to damn those institutions which, by their advocacy of this rationality, sought to stifle divine energy with oppressive morality. This restrictive morality was anathema to Blake’s concept
∗
Timothy Vines is in his second year of a Bachelor of Laws degree and his third year of a
Bachelor of Arts degree at the Australian National University, and is a current resident of
Bruce Hall.
1 Title page of Songs of innocence and experience, plate 1. All quotes from Songs of Innocence and of Experience (‘Songs’) are taken from William Blake, Songs of innocence and of experience, reproduction
INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE AS A RESPONSE TO
THE COLLAPSE OF VALUES
TIMOTHY VINES∗
Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience are a much studied part of the
English canon, and for good reason. Blake’s work depicts a quandary that continues to haunt humanity today: the struggle of high-order humanity against the ‘real’ rationality and morals of institutionalised society. This essay seeks to explore both Blake’s literary reaction to the Enlightenment and the response of early readers to his work.
Showing more than ‘the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’,1 Blake’s
Songs of Innocence and Experience reveals a symbolic development which existed in opposition to conventional concepts of modernity and morality. Blake’s writings are an endeavour to loosen or break society’s ‘mind-forg’d manacles’,2 which had been created through the edicts of a repressive church and supported by Parliament. Blake pointed to what he saw as the traditional values lost in the late 18th century. Through his poetry Blake fashioned an ideal form of human existence and weighed contemporary society against it.
He found society wanting. Calling for the liberation of human energy and creativity, Blake’s Songs are scathing in their criticism of the prevailing mood of enlightenment rationality, a spirit of the age manifested in Newton, industry and conquest. Blake’s poems serve to damn those institutions which, by their advocacy of this rationality, sought to stifle divine energy with oppressive morality. This restrictive morality was anathema to Blake’s concept
∗
Timothy Vines is in his second year of a Bachelor of Laws degree and his third year of a
Bachelor of Arts degree at the Australian National University, and is a current resident of
Bruce Hall.
1 Title page of Songs of innocence and experience, plate 1. All quotes from Songs of Innocence and of Experience (‘Songs’) are taken from William Blake, Songs of innocence and of experience, reproduction
References: Company, New York, 2000. in association with The Trianon Press, Paris, 1967. Dorfman, D, Blake in the nineteenth century: His reputation as a poet from Gilchrist to Yeats, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1969. G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1991, pp. 22-23. Lindsay, DW, Blake: Songs of innocence and experience, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1989. Malcolmson, A (ed.), William Blake: an introduction, Constable Young Books Ltd, London, 1967.