William Blake - the radical Romantic
William Blake was born in Soho, London, in 1757. He was a poet, a painter, a printmaker and a radical thinker. Blake was largely unrecognised during his lifetime. However, he is now considered a pioneering figure in the history of poetry and visual arts during the Romantic age.
Songs of Innocence and Experience is widely acknowledged as Blake's masterpiece, and is a collection of poems and images that were first illustrated by Blake himself in 1789. Several years later, Blake bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.
In the collection, Blake explores the duality of the human condition: Innocence reflects the unfallen world whilst Experience reflects the fallen world. Blake explored our mode of perception - generating a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism. Blake saw childhood as a state of Innocence, although he felt the child is not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. For Blake, this world impinges on childhood itself and thus becomes Experience, a state of being that is marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear, by social and political corruption, oppressed by the Church, State and the ruling classes.
Songs of Innocence, consists of a collection of 19 poems and artwork. The volume conveys mainly a happy and innocent perception. However, at times it subtly shows the danger of such a vulnerable state of being. This is demonstrated in The Little Black Boy and The Chimney Sweeper.
Songs of Experience forms the second part of the collection, and consists of 26 poems. The poems were published in 1794. Poems such as The Little Girl Lost and The Little Girl Found were moved by Blake to Songs of Innocence, and were frequently moved between the two books. This highlights Blake’s understanding of how these two states of being Innocence and Experience are very much interconnected, embodied at different points of life and neither can exist without the other.
Further reading
Links to external websites are not maintained by Bite Sized Britain. They are provided to give users access to additional information. Bite Sized Britain is not responsible for the content of these external websites.