Critical Quotes Flashcards
Williams - materialism
Blake ‘criticised his materialistic society for blunting imagination’
Evans - wisdom
In Blake’ poems wisdom speaks with the voice of a child’
Vine - mind forg’d manacles
‘Blake’s writings are an endeavor to loosen or break society’s ‘mind forg’d manacles’ which had been
created through the edicts of a repressive church and supported by parliament’
Gichrist - who did Blake write for
Blake “neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work-day men at all, rather for children and angels;
himself ‘a divine child,’ whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth.”
Gilchrist - Blake and angels
At an early age his unique mental powers would prove disquieting. According to Gilchrist, on one ramble
he was startled to “see a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.
E.D Hirsch on the “The Sick Rose”
“the invisible worm that flies in the night the worm is used as a symbol of the sexual desire of the persona.
According to E.D Hirsch, “The Sick Rose” satirizing sexual repression.
He agrees with Gleckner,
that the rose’s sickness is a repressive perversion of her sexuality.
The rose is sick with shame, he suggests, though not about her sexuality but her hypocrisy; she is publicly “modest”, but privately
passionate.
Musante - Religion
Blake argues that religion should be unique to the individual, and for this reason, it should be experienced
freely, away from all established rules and norms
Halley and Erdman on little black boy
According to Halley “Blake was influenced by non-conformist religious sects, which compelled him to
reject slavery as an abject horror.”
More specifically, his poem “The Little Black Boy coincided with the
early phrase of … [an abolotion] campaign in which several artist and writers were enlisted” (Erdman)
Makdisi on desire
“for Blake, desire is not an enemy to be brought under control, … nor is it
negatively understood, a response to some external lack or unease caused by the world’s hopeless
finitude. … for Blake, desire is understood in positive rather than negative terms”
Critic on original sin
For Blake, the child is not ruined by the innate sin resulting from the Fall as preached by Christian
doctrine but innately pure and superior to the state of adulthood.
Simpson - innocence
“Innocence is no idyllic state. Innocence is born and has to exist in the world of Experience which is
constantly at pains to corrupt and exploit it.”
Vines - institutions
“Blake’s poems serve to damn those institutions which, by their advocacy of this
rationality, sought to stifle divine energy with oppressive morality”
Dvkstra - protestant church
“The Protestant Church of England regarded the profession of chimney sweeper as a
necessary social evil, because, as a state institution, the Church’s purse would swell when England’s
economy grew”
interpretation - Holy Thursday experience
Blake uses the fate of children in England as the basis for destroying the veneer of holiness the church cloaks itself with, and concludes that a country in which so many children are
poor and miserable cannot lay claim to being a holy nation:
“Is this a holy thing to see / In a rich and fruitful land, - / Babes reduced to misery, / Fed with cold and usurous hand?”
Kirvalidze and Davitishvili - Blake as an early Romantic
tell us that as an early Romantic, Blake “was actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition and imagination over reason
and the pastoral over the urban, focusing on the reconciliation of man and nature”
Seeing how children are aligned with the natural world.
In the ‘Songs’, it seems that in seeking a reconciliation between man and nature, Blake’s aesthetic was directed equally at achieving a
reconciliation between man and child.
McCLard - readers response - TCS - innocent.
observes, the chimney sweepers accept their miserable lot, but Blake depended “on the
reader’s emotional response and personal values to help him or her recognize the injustice”
False conciousness
Blake did not condone the coercion of false happiness that these exploited children had to internalize, in fact, he criticises the existing church for propagating these pernicious notions that keep the oppressed in a state of false consciousness, as Marx would later term it.
Marx - religion
Marx concludes that religion is an insidiously oppressive institution in service not of a God or of the people, but in service of power
Ackroyd - London
Dacre’s very name brings to the poem Marxist-economic implications, hearkening to well-known almshouses in London
Almshouse= charity housing
Norton argues - Chimney sweepers
‘Both Chimney-Sweeper poems show Blake to be a radical critic of the social injustices of his age.
His indictment of desperate material conditions and those institutions which perpetuate them is passionate and powerful, but his greatest anger is reserved for the forces - the established Church, mercenary and uncaring parents - that restrict our vision and prevent us from understanding both our
oppression and the infinite possibilities of true perception.
Norton - religion
‘Religion is active in children’s oppression because it makes them promises about the afterlife rather than
dealing with injustices on Earth. (Norton)
‘Religion is a significant tool of the ruling class’ (Norton)
Kutchings - authority figures
‘Blake’s songs are replete with authority figures who selfishly mistreat the world’
William Blake - systems
“I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man’s’
Frye - contempt and…
“Contempt and Horror have never been more clearly spoken in English poetry”
