Blake Quick fire Revision Flashcards
Imagery
The use of figurative language to evoke a sensory experience in the reader.
Motifs
A motif can be seen as an image, sound, action, or other figure that has a symbolic significance, and contributes toward the development of a theme.
Blake creates contrasting worlds…
pastoral imagery, rural freedom = world of innocence
dark industrial imagery, miserable city, urban constraint = world of experience
What do problematic endings off poems suggest?
Oppressive nature of a corrupt world threatening innocence
What does the end of Experience poems depict?
Uncomfortable and harrowing images of suffering reader is left with e.g. Little black boy
What does the world of innocence imply?
Innocence is a place of nature where the children play and are free in the natural world, people can roam free from the world of constraint presented by experience h/e looming shadows of experience
What does the world of experience imply?
Urban world, children suffer, adults work, trapped in monolithic corrupt organised religion or industrial revolution
Parents as oppressive and controlling of their children
authority figures oppressing those with less power
Dystopian representation of urban settings
Church (ALBL)
Radical Voice
Against organised religion
Idealised world contrasting with a difunctional one
A dream world contrasted with reality
Moral context
Children to be seen not heard (old English proverb) - oppression of children by parents
Psychological context
Constraints on freedom and influence of authority in regulating behaviour (Parents, religion)
Sequential structure
‘Experience’ following ‘Innocence’ - controlling aspect, complementary pairing of poems, time reveals oppression
Settings were oppression takes place
Urban areas, Church
