Holy Thursday: Songs Of Experience

Question 1

What is the context?

Answer 1

-a blatant, pointed political statement - Blake a social critics + attacks self-interested institutions
-response to 1789 Holy Thursday innocent - poems run off from one another
-published 1794
-innocence v experience to show ways world is corrupting
-challenged nations of Br as a treat, rich + fruitful superpower
-Blake’s stance is radical + rude to those in power

Question 2

What was happening during 1794?

Answer 2

-the French rev
-sparked an organised agitation for democracy free of any corruption or monarchy
-the reign of terror made him despise the revolution due to the massacres + public executions

Question 3

What is the metre of the poem?

Answer 3

-stanza 1 — iambic which creates musical rhythm + draws reader in
-then switches to trochaic which allows Blake to destroy everything he has created + emph words like ‘cold’
-this continues in each stanza which results in disrupted stanzas
-reflecting chaos + corruption in the world

Question 4

What is the form?

Answer 4

-4 quatrains
-conformity + no disruption which contrasts to the metre
-a projection of what society could look like but instead is filled with corruption + disruption
-could reflect perpetual cycle of unequal corrupted society