Blake

Question 1

What event had a profound effect upon Blake’s attitude to the world

Answer 1

French Revolution

Question 2

What does Dr F.W.Bateson say about Blakes Engravings

Answer 2

writes appreciatively of them but thinks as a commentary on the points of detail in the meaning of the poem they are normally unhelpful and if not actually misleading

Question 3

Blake and revoultutionary thought?

Answer 3

Although he was not part of any radical political organization in England at the time of the French Rev ,his works suggest a connection to revolutionary thought

Question 4

why don’t all the accompanying engraving contribute to the same degree?

Answer 4

Some such are Chimmney sweeper (experience) are decorative or illustrative adding to the feeling and atmosphere but contribute little to interpretation
Whereas more is given in others such as nurses song experience where the child is depicted as a young adolencent submitting unwillingly to the combing of his hair- imposition of adult standards.

Question 5

Key themes of songs of innocence and experience

Answer 5

contraries 
imagination
nature
relgion
revolution

Question 6

What do some critics see the tiger as a metaphor for

Answer 6

Revoultion

Question 7

What are the images of rebellion in the tiger

Answer 7

satans revolt in paradise lost -“the stars threw down their spears”
Prometheus - “what hand dare seize the fire”
perhaps Icarus

Question 8

What was happening in 1792 when London was being written

Answer 8

revolutionary mobs were invading Paris to overthrow the King.Blake openly supported this rebellion

Question 9

What is the subtitle of Songs of I and E

Answer 9

the two contrary states of the human soul’

Question 10

Why is Songs of I and E regarded as both a visual and literary work of art

Answer 10

because each poem publish with detailed accompanying art work penned by Blake

Question 11

What is the effect of repetition in London

Answer 11

convey the speaker’s belief that everything is a possession of the ruling system and that no-one is free.
The repetition of “in every” in the second stanza emphasises the universal sense of misery and despair

Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize inability to escape the all-encompassing effect of the ‘mind-forg’d manacles.

Question 12

What is the effect of alliteration in London

Answer 12

It links concepts together e,g
The weak are in ‘woe' / misery
The ‘mind' is ‘manacled'
The sooty ‘Chimney' is equated with the ‘black'ning Church'
The ‘Soldier' is not proud but sighs

Question 13

In London how does the image of “Runs in blood down Palace walls” allude to the French Rev

Answer 13

tales by émigrés of the Terror after the French Revolution were a very real reminder of death and suffering imposed by despotic leaders.

Question 14

What did Blake think about the Imagination

Answer 14

he saw it as essential to understanding the human world

Question 15

What did Blake think of authority figures

Answer 15

He was anti authority whether it be Law, monarchy or church

Question 16

3 poems about contraries

Answer 16

clod and the pebble
infant sorrow/infant joy
London
The Blossom

Question 17

What is the clod and the pebble about

Answer 17

different attitudes to love
Clod = unconditional love (soft, malleable, flexible, TEMPORARY!)
Pebble = selfish love (hardened, WISE!)

Question 18

What is the basic format of the clod and the pebble

Answer 18

first stanza - clod
middle stanza - discord?
Thirid stanza the pebble

Question 19

what is the rhyme scheme of the clod and the pebble

Answer 19

first and last stanza ABAB
middle stanza ABCB rhyme
This gives the reader an impression of two different voices; the unconditional lover represented by the clod and the selfish lover represented by the pebble. This simple rhyme scheme conveys confidence, suggesting both personas believe their view to be true.

Question 20

Blake claimed he was blessed with visions , what does this mean

Answer 20

these could have just been an extension of his highly imaginative mind
religious experiences?

Question 21

examples of poems about imagination

Answer 21

London

Question 22

As well as being about revolution what is another interpretation of the tiger

Answer 22

Blake building on the conventional idea that nature, like a work of art, must in some way contain a reflection of it’s creator

Question 23

What shaped Blake’s beliefs in contraries

Answer 23

he read the mystical writings of Jacob Boehme here, he would have met the belief that innocence and fallenness co-exist in human beings as their normal state
His close reading of the OT would also have shaped this

Question 24

Summary of Infant Sorrow

Answer 24

A baby speaks of its entry into the world, which brought pain to its parents. The world it came into seemed dangerous. It was helpless, vulnerable, noisy, encased in its body like a devil hidden in a cloud.

Question 25

Summary of infant Joy

Answer 25

Many critics see the poem’s dialogue as a lullaby a mother is singing to her newborn child. She assumes both their voices. The child’s words celebrates the baby’s present innocence and joy (‘I happy am’).

Question 26

What is the language like in infant joy

Answer 26

Simple
repetition of a few key words – ‘sweet’, ‘happy’, ‘joy’
joy occurs six times in twelve lines, ‘sweet’ four times.

Question 27

What is the rhyme scheme of the lamb

Answer 27

AABB
outrageously simple
Blake rhymes “thee” with itself four times and mostly sticks to single syllables, like “feed” and “mead,” “mild” and “child.

Question 28

What meter is the lamb written in

Answer 28

basic trochaic metre.

This metre is often found in children’s verse and so enhances the impression of simplicity.

Question 29

Themes in the lamb

Answer 29

nature of innocence
nature of the world and its creator
man in gods image

Question 30

Blake time was a time of turmoil because of what

Answer 30

arising challenges to challenges to established ideas about monarchy, hierarchy, human nature and human rights.

Question 31

What did spencer say of Blake in 2000

Answer 31

Blake was against anything anyone thought

Question 32

how has London been described

Answer 32

as the most concisely violent assault on establishment thinking English poetry has yet produced

Question 33

summary of the lamb

Answer 33

the narrator asks the reader to relate the lambs image as the most innocent of Gods creatures to the image of his maker, the lamb of God.

Question 34

London taps in to a fearful political mood- one example of an allusion to the controversies of the time

Answer 34

opening line ‘i wadered thro’ each chartere’d street/Near where the charter’d Thames does flow’
draws on legal and commercial associastions of charters but more interestingly almost certainly alludes to another radical text of 1790’s Paine’s The rights of man
in this Paine attacked charters as a way of securing liberties for the privlaged few. For him liberty a universal right, not something subject to definition and constraint by charter
same belief is part of the background of Blake’s poem

Question 35

Summary of London

Answer 35

The poet walks through London’s unhappy streets, seeing and hearing evidence of suffering and unhappiness

Question 36

What does David Erdman (a great authority on Blake) say about the tiger

Answer 36

points out that in 1790 the tiger was frequently used as an emblem of the revolutionary paris mob