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William Blake's "The Lamb"
In the poem "The Lamb," William Blake distinguishes his unique style through the incorporation of religious symbolism, creative lines, and simplistic patterns. "The Lamb" was published as part of a series of poems in 1789 titled the Songs of Innocence; actually, he wrote "The Lamb" and the other works as part of a series of lyrics. The entire work represents an enlightened state in Blake's life, and it was written before a contrary, darker state of mind in the 1793 sequel, the Songs of Experience. Blake was influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, a writer who gave Christianity a mystical interpretation, and that influenced is found in Blake's work, like "The Lamb," poems that were more simplistic in style and nature before he became more contrition and prophetic in the Songs of Experience. Through simplistic structure, he chose the narrator of a child, as in this poem, told through childlike eyes, speaking of the innocence of all us, and that the lamb is Christ, marveling over God's creations. It describes how "the lambs graze upon the cropped grass beneath the images….the dramatic perspectives and continual allusiveness of these lyrics has meant that they have been endlessly interpreted and reinterpreted….these are not poems…these are discrete works of art in which the words are only one element in a unified design" (Ackroyd, 122). Blake loved the "obtuse. He will have nothing said against superstition, which is 'ignorant honesty…beloved of god and man" (Erdman, 116).
Throughout this poem and its other poems, "pastoralism is the controlling convention…for Blake, the shepherd-sheep relationship and the...
In the Songs of Innocence, "the field is predominantly field, valley, and hill in poems like…'The Lamb' "(Gardner, 50). Blake wrote that "'Innocence dwells with wisdom but never with Ignorance' " (Erdman, 105). We have to examine what Blake was attempting in his life at this time. He and his wife were struggling as illustrators and printers, Blake's brother died, and I suspect he was questioning the nature of God -- though none of the research confirms this theory, but to look at God and Creation, as he does in this work, it's a back-to-basics approach in thought and structure. We do know he sought an alternative to cynicism, "a state of mind Blake called organized innocence….cannot be understood if we suppose that the author himself is innocent or oblivious of 'life's pelting storm'…a person aware of much amiss and seeking a cloak against ill winds could have made Blake's conscious creative effort to organize a place of shelter for Wisdom and Innocence, lion and lamb, to dwell in together" (Erdman, 105). Blake's poem like "The Lamb" "project the innocent's ability to recast his world imaginatively into one where we can not be at home but also be cared for by a loving shepherd. It is pointless to object such a world does not exist in what seems to be the world of common sense and 'experience': such an objection would be raised by a Bacon or by a similar advocate of ratio perception" (Paanamen, 75). Surprisingly, Blake expected some objection to "The Lamb" and other poems of Songs of Innocence.…
References
Ackroyd, Peter. Blake: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Erdman, David. Blake: Prophet Against Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954.
Gardner, Stanley. Blake. New York: Arco Publishing Company, Inc., 1969.
Lister, Raymond. William Blake: An Introduction to The Man and to His Work. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1968.
1. First stanza: "Little Lamb, who made thee? / Dost thou know who made thee?" IV. Body paragraph III: Contrast with Tyger A. Ironically, the lion is "commonly known as the protector of the Lamb," (Damon & Eaves 242). B. The lion is "often associated with the Tyger, for they are both forms of wrath: the lion is spiritual wrath, inspired by pity…while the Tyger's blind wrath is purely emotional," (all Damon &
The poet does not use slang as a means to alter the general messages of the poem, as the grammatical style is formal for the period during which the poem was written. The vocabulary he uses is standard and although contemporary readers might consider the vernacular to be outdated, it is actually in accordance with the period when "The Lamb" was written. Blake wrote the poem in closed verse and
William Blake Social Indictment and a Religious Vision of Salvation in William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" Written in 1789 and published in the collection, Songs of Innocence, William Blake's poem "The Chimney Sweeper," shows the cruel world of being a child in post-industrial London. The narrator of the poem is a chimney sweeper who was sold into the profession by his father, his mother having died when he was very young. Before
The fact that the unnamed narrator, who could not have been more than five or six years old, shows a young boy's chilling resignation to his fate. These passages therefore show how thoroughly social conventions can "brainwash" society members, especially those who experience the most brutal oppression. This acquiescence to social convention is seen most clearly in Tom Dacre's dream. The ideal of a boy playing and running shows by contrast
William Blake's "The Lamb" is part of his manuscript for Songs of Innocence (Erdman, 1988, p. 72). As such, there is a light, jubilant tone rendered throughout, which pervades the poem's theme, subject, narrator, and setting. Within this poem, an unidentified narrator directly addresses a lamb. The principle motif that this work revolves about is the time honored conceit of a lamb representing Jesus Christ and the mercy and kindness
He saw that there could be no innocence if one could not acquire experience and knowledge later. This is also true of the kind of art Blake executed. Engravings are drawings made up of lines. It is not possible to remove the lines and have any art left, because that is what his style art does: it divides blank space. Without the blank space, there can be no lines.