EX-London

Question 1

The opening image of wandering “thro’ each charter’d street,” the focus on sound and the image of stains recalls the first stanza of the introduction to Songs of Innocence and now focuses on the city not the pastoral bard ; which quotes demonstrates this.

Answer 1

“valleys wild “
“ songs of pleasant glee”
“On a cloud I saw a child.”

Question 2

The poem’s title denotes a specific geographical space, not the archetypal locales in which many of other Songs are set. What is the effect of this?

Answer 2

The urban space-even the natural River Thames- submits to being “charter’d” a term which combines mapping and legalism and reflects the restriction of society.

Question 3

What is the effect of Blake’s reputation of the word “charter’d”?

Answer 3

this reinforces the sense of stricture the speaker feels upon the city where even language itself, the poet’s medium, experiences a confinement

Question 4

All the speakers subjects ____ ______ ____________ ______ _____ are known only through the traces they leave behind; the ubiquitous cries, the blood on the palace walls.

Answer 4

men, infants, chimney sweepers, soldier, harlot

Question 5

In the third stanza the cry of the chimney-sweep and the sigh of the soldier metamorphose (almost mystically) into what? use the poem

Answer 5

into soot on “church appals” and “blood down palace walls”—but we never see the chimney-sweep or the soldier themselves, only what is left when they are gone and used.

Question 6

While the cry of the chimney-sweep and the sigh of the soldier metamorphose (almost mystically) into soot on “church appals” and “blood down palace walls”, how is the government rendered?

Answer 6

they are rendered by synecdoche, by mention of the places in which they reside such as the “Palace walls”

Question 7

Indeed, it is crucial to Blake’s commentary that neither the city’s victims nor their oppressors ever appear in body: Blake does not simply blame a set of institutions or system of enslavement for the cities woes but what?

Answer 7

he blames the victims whom help to make their own “mind-frog’d manacles” more powerful than material chains could ever be.

Question 8

How does the poem end?

Answer 8

with the cycle of misery; in the form of a “new-born Infants tear” whom is born into poverty, to a cursing “marriage hearse”. (prozzy)

Question 9

Sexual and martial union- the place of possible regeneration and rebirth are tainted by the fact that a “new born Infants tear” ends the poem in poverty to what?

Answer 9

the cursing of a “Marriage Hearse”

Question 10

The world of innocent is frequently a rural world, whereas the world of experience is composed by the realm of fragmentary sights “blights” and sounds in the “charter’d” streets of where?

Answer 10

London

Question 11

What is the structural effect of the repetition of words such as “mark” and “every”?

Answer 11

this unites the poem while at the same time suggesting that there is a repetitive quality of life in the city

Question 12

London is likely the most concisely violent assault on the establishment thinking English poetry has yet produced; however the understanding of the power of this attack can only be securely based on an appreciation of the remarkable rhetorical qualities of the poem. For example, explain the effect of the most basic of all rhetorical devices, repetition.

Answer 12

repetition of “every” hammers through the poem like the dull boot of totalitarianism which for blake characterises the world in which he finds himself

Question 13

This is a poem remarked for its auditory and visual power. We hear cries, voices and “bans” Which is the double meaning of “bans”

Answer 13

“bans” literally in the sense of words read out in Church, but bans also in the sense which adds to the sentiment of prohibition which patterns with “charter’d” to the semantic field of confinement

Question 14

The poet uncovers the truth with which society is complacent to in the fate of “soliders” and “harlots” whom are victim to the city and cut away from natural life. What is the suggestion from this?

Answer 14

that rich and powerful men do not fight their own battles, reflecting that it is the poor or suffer at the tyranny of those they delegate power

Question 15

What could Blake be protesting against with the notion that “the Chimney-Sweepers cry/ Every blackening Church appalls”

Answer 15

In the context of the 18th century, that which is “appalled” is covered in a dark shroud which we can then use to hypothesise that Blake thought of the pretensions to purity which the church vaunted are themselves sullied, reduced to blackness by the brutality of which it chooses to remain unaware

Question 16

Blake is famous for his rejection of the notion of the “system” a concept he associates with rationalism and the dreaded unholy trinity of which 3 thinkers on their reliance on reason, science and the moral law?

Answer 16

Newton, Bacon and Locke

Question 17

What was the name of that which Blake referred to when finding the hidden connections that hold together emerging phoenomea?

Answer 17

“fourfold vision”

Question 18

What does the narrator say has formed London?

Answer 18

it is the product of “mind-fore’d manacles”, others ideologies

Question 19

What can be suggested from the fact that the narrator blames that the “blight” of London is a product of the “mind-fore’d manacles” which compares to the criticism in the Chimney Sweeper of Songs of innocence?

Answer 19

This view is that the real problem in society is that these manacles are forged by ourselves; in other words we appear willingly to succumb to then restraints placed upon us and to become victims of our own exploitation

Question 20

This poem reveals Blake’s true thoughts about the society in which eh lived yet it is still universal and timeless as every society has restrictions. What does the speaker notice about the faces of those he passes?

Answer 20

he sees a” mark in every face I meet “ of “weakness” and “woe” which sets the tone as one of melancholy

Question 21

London was first published in the collection of Songs of Experience in 1794 and was one of the series of poems; these short poems explore the harsh realities of late 18th and early 19th century life under whose rule?

Answer 21

King George III

Question 22

The rhyme scheme is regular ABAB, CDCD to the end of the poem. what is the effect of these patterns?

Answer 22

these patterns tend to unify the verse, giving it a flow and trajectory that holds the reader’s attention

Question 23

the voice is the first person singular and seems to be a persona created by the poet, so that the poem can be categorised as what?

Answer 23

a dramatic monologue

Question 24

the “marks” were often interpreted as a sign of the authority of coercive societies What would Blake’s fellow Dissenters have understood about this reference?

Answer 24

that Blake was overturning the corrupt social system of their day

Question 25

The final image, the oxymoron of the “Marriage ______’“(for funerals) reflect the misery of both mother and infant alike and the death of innocence and regeneration.

Answer 25

hearse

Question 26

the near alliteration of the final line of the bl and pl plosive sounds in “blights” and “plagues” combined with the “Marriage hearse” is constricted horrificly with the rhyming couplet of “_______________”

Answer 26

Harlot’s curse

Question 27

Some critics have analysed the poem in its historical context and has since been suggested that the “mind forg;d manacles” refer to Englands unwillingness to follow the lead of France and revolt against their tyrannical oppressors. The French Revolution was how old when Blake published London, and Blakes support of this lends credence to this interpretation of the poem?

Answer 27

5 years

Question 28

Blake may mention “every cry of every man” but we never hear anyones voice, why?

Answer 28

as this suggests that while the plight of the poor are universal, ultimately they have no voice politically

Question 29

Blake may mention “every cry of every man” but we never hear anyones voice,as this suggests that while the plight of the poor are universal, ultimately they have no voice politically. However the mouth is used to “cry” three times, “sigh” and “curse” but what is the effect of this?

Answer 29

they never utter any meaningful objection or opposition to the “manacles” that keep Londeners in their psychological chains