Blake Flashcards
1
Q
What does Blake’s songs of innocence and experience serve as?
A
Blake’s political manifesto through showing two contrary states of the human soul. Innocence shows a pure, youthful, light and vulnerable perspective providing simple moral messages whilst experience represents the harsh realities of life and societal issues such as poverty
2
Q
What did Blake argue for?
A
Physical and mental freedom, creative imagination and the life force that exists in the natural world
3
Q
What happened during Blake’s childhood?
A
- Blake was born the 28th of November 1757 as a son of a London Hosier (maker of tights) as part of a lower middle-class family
- Whilst his childhood home had a tradition of dissenting religion as they saw themselves as part of the Moravian religious sect, Blake felt a significant connection to the New Testament as it influenced many of the themes within his works
- From the age of 10, Blake did not go to school and was instead home-schooled then art college and which was a decision by his parents that he was happy about as it developed his anti -authoritarian views as he believed school would have taken away his identity by promoting neoclassicism and utilitarian ideology
4
Q
How did Blake connect with God?
A
- Throughout his life, he experienced eidetic imagery within his dreams/visions that held high sensory perceptions and he held an immaterialist approach as he believed it was just as real as the material world as he saw past the fallen world
- At the age of 4, he saw God’s head at a window, then, he saw prophet Ezekiel under a tree leading his mother to beat him, as well as angels
- Another important figure in his life was his brother Robert, with whom he was very close. Robert died aged just twenty in 1787, but Blake continued to see him in some of the many visions he saw throughout his life and even credited him with proffering the idea that Blake would employ to create a new kind of engraving process
5
Q
What was Blake’s career?
A
- At art college, he became influenced by the works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Durer, the poetry of Ben Johnson and Edmund Spenser
- At 14, he started an apprenticeship to a Basire as an engraver, leading him to work on the gothic Westminster tombs
- In 1779, he became a student at the royal academy where he rebelled against the style of unfinished painters such as Rubens and he disliked the school’s first president, Joshua Reynolds through his pursuit of general truth and beauty as he didn’t like the blurry and muddy lines illustrated in oil paintings
- During his lifetime, some of his paintings were at the academy but he lacked any sense of success amongst them
- For most of his life, he worked as an engraver rather than as a poet and artist distinguishing him from the upper-class romantic poets such as Byron and Keats as he was almost penniless when he died as his printing shop failed
- Blake published almost all of his works himself, by an original process in which the poems were etched by hand, along with illustrations and decorative images, onto copper plates. These plates were inked to make prints, and the prints were then coloured in with paint. This expensive and labour-intensive production method resulted in a quite limited circulation of Blake’s poetry during his life
- He was a champion of social justice and believed individuals had the right to question authority and rebel against them, specifically if it had a negative impact on their human rights
6
Q
What was Blake’s lovelife like?
A
- He married Catherine Boucher in 1782 and they remained devoted to each other until his death in 1827. As despite her being illiterate, he taught her how to engrave
- He wanted to engage with love with his life suggesting inviting a concubine aligning with his beliefs as a Swedenborgian supporter, but she declined
7
Q
What were Blake’s beliefs?
A
- He was anti - authoritarian as he saw upper class institutions and the church as corrupt
- He was a supporter of the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg which was closely aligned with religion as Swedenborg saw the last judgement and the second advent of the lord believing one god, a person’s fate depending on the character of the person in life, marriage is eternal and a true spiritual marriage will find their true love in the afterlife, belief in extra-terrestrial life and that all religions provide valid paths to heaven if they acknowledge god and do charity work
- Blake believed that scientific advancements eroded the importance of God and spirituality
- He was put on trial for speaking negatively about George heightened by the anti -monarchist sentiment of the American revolution as well as appreciating the individualism new America promoted
- The French revolution accelerated his philanthropic beliefs as he campaigned for a new political reform in order to help Britain’s poor
- He wanted universal male suffrage
- He wanted a progressive form of income tax that was redistributed which currently allowed the rich get richer increasing the class divide
- Blake was sympathetic with the ideals of both Revolutions
- America rebelled against British attempts to increase taxes from the “New World in 1770s. Declaration of Independence signed 4th July, 1776.
- In France, people became increasingly angry because the Aristocracy and Church who didn’t pay tax and were kept in luxury by the working class. Louis XVI ruled with absolute power. France was bankrupt because of expensive foreign wars. Louis asked commoners to help him and this gave them a voice. 1789class war exploded on Paris streets. 14th July - storming of the Bastille; prisoners released, governor’s head cut off and paraded through street. Citizens formed their own government and Louis was ordered not to leave Paris. New party established: abolished privileges of aristocracy, fair taxes, equality of all citizens, right to an elected government, free speech, fair courts (‘Liberte, egalite, fraternite”). Louis beheaded at the Guillotine which sent shockwaves around the world and made other monarchies worried the same could happen on their shores. 40,000 killed, street of blood ran red, civil war, reign of reason turned into reign of hysteria and paranoia. 1799 - army took control, and Napoleon crowned himself in 1804, with the Pope anointing him Emperor of France. Absolute power returned
- He was considered to have radical political views as he was against the monarchy and saw revolution as the inevitable way to overthrow them
- He was considered to have radical political views as he was against the monarchy and saw revolution as the inevitable way to overthrow them
- His relationship to religion was an important one but problematic; he was never an Atheist, and the fact that he saw visions of God and angels at various points in his life was extremely significant, but he had a hatred of organised religion in all its forms and was deeply suspicious and critical of the Church and its administration. Given the evils he saw in the world, Blake was sometimes angry with God as its creator for permitting such things to exist. He despised the hypocrisy of those who used religion as a form of control over the populace while doing little in the way of Christian charity to help the less fortunate
- Blake’s was made clear in his 1795 painting depicting Sir Isaac Newton hunched naked over a diagram with a compass in his hand, fully absorbed in a calculation and accordingly blind to the world around him. The idea of everything being measured and “charter’d” (recall how Blake uses this word in ‘London’) was to Blake a denial of the world of nature, the power of imagination and of the true qualities of humanity as spiritual beings. It also established a divide between the arts and the sciences which Blake believed was clearly linked
- Blake had become deeply disillusioned with the progress of the French Revolution. His views on it, as with many such issues, were complicated – on principle he admired rebellion against authority but abhorred violence – but he was not alone in feeling that the aims and intentions of the revolution (which had begun as dissatisfaction with injustice and impoverished living conditions under a rich and powerful monarchy, crystallized as a reaction to unfair taxes on the poor, and was at least initially a democratic attempt to gain representation in parliament and increased rights for ordinary people) were being subverted horribly
8
Q
What did he publish before the songs of innocence and experience?
A
Blake published an illustrated book of religious aphorisms in which he condemned most of the norms of orthodox religion; in subsequent years he was to re-appropriate and reinterpret many figures and events from the Bible into his own deeply involved mythology, combining them with aspects of other religions and folklore to create writings of great complexity
9
Q
How was Blake sympathetic to the plight of women?
A
- Some factories favoured women and children for their workforce as they felt justified in paying them even less than the men. In her 1790 treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote of London: “In this great city that proudly rears its head and boasts of its population and commerce, how much misery lurks in pestilent corners.”
- Blake was supportive of a rising feminist movement through his friendship with Mary Wollstonecraft
- Women were considered property of their fathers and husbands
- Women received a smaller wage
- The focus of women and children in Blake’s poetry rebelled against, the Augustin age (1700 -45) who believed there were unfit as a focus
10
Q
How does Rousseau and Blake link?
A
- The French writer Rousseau, for example, believed children were born good and corrupted by society; he advocated allowing them to develop naturally into adults at their own speed rather than forcing adulthood upon them; he penned the famous line “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains” in 1762. One might not only consider these opinions an analogue for the views of Blake but might even call to mind Blake’s similar imagery of “mind-forg’d manacles” (‘London’) when reading Rousseau’s ideas on how people were sometimes complicit in their own enslavement. Yet Blake rejected much of Rousseau because of the French writer’s wholehearted belief that humans were improved by education (compare this with Blake’s attitude in ‘The School Boy’). He similarly disliked the French philosopher and writer Voltaire because of his Deism, the idea that God had made the world but was no longer involved in its workings
- Freedom can e achieved through naturalistic education (everything is good as it comes from the hands of the maker); believed schools/colleges to be ridiculous; believed cities have filthy morals and the countryside could protect children from this as education should be celebrating childhood through protecting children
11
Q
What were factories like in the 1790s?
A
- Worse than this was the prevalence of child labour in mills, mines, factories and of course particularly as chimney sweeps, where their small size was perceived as an advantage. Life was tough for everyone, labour laws didn’t exist and so children had little or no protection from exploitative masters who would take on apprentices as young as four, use and discard them as they outlived their usefulness. Factory and mill machinery was dangerous, particularly as the children were often utilised to duck and weave between moving parts to clear debris because they were small and nimble. Chimney sweeping was a death sentence for many - falling from inside the chimneystacks often led to death or deformity whilst contracting particular strains of cancer and respiratory diseases from the constant exposure to soot and dirt was also likely. There was no access to healthcare and no recourse or rehabilitation for those who were sick or injured. Blake railed consistently against these horrendous practices, as did some of his contemporaries
- Rising death rates amongst children because of the harsh working conditions in factories
12
Q
How does Locke and Blake link?
A
- Locke: Children are born as blank slates (tabula rasa), personalities, likes and dislikes. Believed a child not guided by parents can become cruel and irrational; parents guiding their children will turn them away from injustice; curiosity and liberty guide the youngster most, parents should cherish their child’s curiosity; freedom of choice - even if children were forced to play with toys they would probably grow weary: forcing children to learn also makes them weary; believed the upper -class could improve the lives of the poor/lower classes
