Comparison Of holy Thursday (expeirnce And Innocence) Flashcards
What do the two poems reflect?
Blake’s theory of contrariness, the title of the poem refers to Thursday before Easter Sunday
Thursday before Easter what happens?
Observed by Christians in commemoration of Christ’s last suppler
- washing feet is performed
- the celebrant washes the feet of 12 people to commemorate Christ washing his disciples feet
How did Holy Thursday survive in England?
Custom survived of giving alms to the poor
Different approaches
- theme is different ( first is light and ironic)
- second is more savage and direct
Difference in events
In innocence, Blake describes public appearance of charity school children
- in experience he criticises the institutions responsible for hapless children
- speaker entertains questions about the children as victims of cruelty and injustice( some in which the earlier poem implied)
Rhetorical technique in experience
Pose a number of suspicious questions that receive indirect yet quite censoriously toned answers
Sermon at the end
- innocent song ends on a positive note without preaching a sermon while the experienced speaker preachers a sermon that is negative in tone full of anxiety about the destruction of moral obligation
What does Blake do with both poems?
Clarifies his view of the hypocrisy of formalised religion and it’s claimed acts of charity
- exposes the established church’s self congratulatory hymns as a sham that the sound of the children is only a trembling cry
In innocence how are the children first described and what does this show?
‘Flowers of London town’ - emphasises their beauty and fragility - undercuts the assumption that these destitute children are the city’s refuse and burden rendering them instead as London’s fairest and finest
In Holy Thursday how does the children’s image change?
Described as resembling lambs in their innocence and meekness
- then become the character of humming ‘multitudes’ into something heavenly and sublime
- as children sing in third stanza they are no longer just weak and mild - strength of their combined voices raised toward God evokes something more powerful and puts them in direct contact with heaven
Simile for children’s song in songs of innocence
First given as ‘a mighty wind’ and then as ‘harmonious thunderings’
- the beadles are eclipsed in their aged pallor by the internal radiance of the children
Final line in songs of innocence
Advises compassion for the poor
- Blake emphasises the heaven lines and innocent children
What does the beginning of Holy Thursday in innocence transform to in experience
‘Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy?
Questions in experience what do we learn?
That whatever care the children receive is minimal and grudgingly bestowed
- ‘the cold and usurous hand’ that feeds them is motivated by self interest rather than love and pity
What does the ‘hand’ represent in songs of experience
Metonymically represents not just the daily guardians of the orphans by the city of London as a whole
- entire city has a civic responsibility to these helpless members of society
- yet it delegates or denies this obligation
What do the children have to participate in in songs of experience?
A public display of joy that poorly reflects their actual circumstances
- serves rather to reinforce the self righteous complacency of those who are supposed to care for them
What does the song in songs of innocence turn into?
A ‘trembling cry’
- first poem the parade of children found natural symbolisation in London’s mighty river but here the children and natural world conceptually connect via a strikingly different set of images
- fault crops and sunless fields symbolise the wasting of a nations resources and public’s negligence of the future
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What do the thorns in songs of experience show
Link their suffering to that of Christ
- they live in an ‘eternal winter’ where they experience neither physical comfort nor the warmth of love
Don’t of Holy Thursday in innocence
Meek and lenient
- poem calls upon the reader to be more critical than the speaker is
- asked to contemplate the true meaning of Christian pity and to contrast the institutionalised charity of the schools with the love of which God and innocent children are capable
First 2 stanzas of innocence
Unsettling aspects
- mention of children’s clean faces which have been tided up
- public display of love and charity conceals the cruelty to which impoverished children were often subjected
- orderliness of the children’s March and the ominous ‘wands’ of the beadles suggest rigidity, regimentation and the violent authority
What does the children’s song suggest in innocence
The tempestuousness of the children’s song as the poem transitions from visual to aural imagery carries a suggestion of divine vengeance
