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WILLIAM BLAKE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LIFE
William Blake was a versatile poet, dramatist, artist, engraver, and publisher. He was the most independent and original romantic poet as well as painter and printmaker of the 18th century. He was born in November 1757 in London. When he was only ten years old, he left school where he had learned reading and writing. His mother, Catherine, then taught him at home. Blake was baptised at St James’s Church, and the Bible had a profound influence on him remaining a source of inspiration throughout his life. (vedi The lamb – agnello simbolo religioso) At home, his father bought him some Greek antiquities and he began engraving copies of drawings of them. In these drawings Blake had his first chance to get to know the classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Albrecht Dürer. He was sent to a drawing school at the age of ten. He studied his favourite
subjects actively and it was in this period that Blake made his first explorations in poetry. In 1782, when he was 24, he married Catherine Boucher , the daughter of a market gardener. William not only taught Catherine to read and write, but he also trained her as an engraver. The marriage with Catherine was a turning-point in his life because she gave him invaluable assistant in his works and endless spiritual support. She assisted with the printing and hand colouring of his poems. They worked together to publish the Songs of Innocence. Despite the poverty and hardships, they insisted on publishing their works on their own, instead of signing contracts with any publishers. Unfortunately None of the work produced got the attention it deserved while he was alive.
ABOUT HIS WORK
The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of
Experience
William Blake was the most extraordinary literary genius of his age. His lyrics display all the characteristics of the romantic spirit. He influenced the Romantic poets with recurring themes of good and evil, heaven and hell, knowledge and innocence, and external reality versus inner imagination.
One of the most important poems in The Songs of Experience is London, in which Blake shows us his social criticism for the miseries of common people. A large number of Blake’s poems focuses on themes that were relevant to the society in which he wrote, such as his poems on industrialisation , child labour and the more general notions of man
versus nature and the individual against society.
The capitalisation of man suggests that the whole of urbanised society has reached the state of moral decay and misery
Poem form
It is a sixteen-line poem composed of four stanzas of alternatively rhyming short lines and it is famous for its highly strong musical pattern. the rhyme and rhythm are very definite and structured: the rhyme is ABAB CDCD , and this poem is written with a metrical pattern of iambic tetrameter and with trochaic tetrameter. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasise the
prevalence of the horrors the speaker describes.
