William+Blake

__**William Blake**__ __**//Introduction// of //Songs of Innocence and Experience//**__

The word innocence describes perfectly the introduction because it represents a childish idealization of beauty. Happiness, laugh, and weeping with joy could be related with children. In the intro of Songs of Experience, nature is the central element where society is not admitted. all images are related to natural elements.

NOTE: William Blake (with his wife's help) painted every single picture of all his poems in every book. From book to book, the colors and sometimes the image change.

For me, William Blake put everything into his works because he expressed himself not only by words, but also, by colors and visual images. These three aspects join to become extremely powerful to people's eyes and psyche because of all the different aspects working together in order to create expectations and different reactions on the audience.

For more info go to: [|www.blakearchive.org]

Ana Cecilia Marín Acuña

Here are some images of William Blake's poems:

= __**The Lamb and The Tyger**__ - Chalo! (Gonzalo Córdoba Chavarría) = With Blake being the most outstanding of Romanticism's first wave, I believe that "The Lamb" is an excellent example of what Ana said about the "childish idealization of beauty," as it is a through child's eye and perceptions that we get to see this little animal. Thanks to this child's voice, we are able see how Blake makes a simple but powerful interconection between God, the child and the lamb, giving them a sense of unity. This depicts an idea of a perfect balance in nature. Here, nature (God-child-lamb) is not only portrayed as perfect and balanced, but also as beatiful beyond boundaries through a dense use of idealizing adjetives in the first stanza, such as "clothing of **delight**" (l. 5), "**Softest** clothing, **woolly**, **bright**" (l. 6) and "**tender** voice" (l. 7). Almost literaly, on the other hand, we have "The Tyger," a poem that depicts a dangerous animal in any aspect conceivable. However, what interests me the most is not the poem itself but its contrast with "The Lamb." I believe that, of course, Blake established this contrast (and many others) for a set of purposes. One of those purposes was to highlight the human need of viewing about everything in terms of binary oppositions, which is still deeply rooted in our contemporary society. Being this said, Blake seems to virtually state a paradox when the voice poses the possibility of this dangerous and sinister tyger and the innocent and blissful lamb coming from the same Creator: "Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?" (ls. 20-21). . . . . . . . . . . . ..

So, here I suggest the following questions for you to comment in the discussion section: a) How is this paradox solved? b) What does this paradox reveal? c) do you find any other relevant relationship between the poems?(feel free to comment about any other aspect of the poems if you don't feel like answering my questions)