Intro to Innocence

Question 1

Intro to Innocence Stanza 1 - 2 techniques and analysis

Answer 1

1. ‘Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee’

• ‘Wild’ valleys, adjective conveys the power of nature
• ‘Pleasant glee’ sets positive tone
• ‘Piping’ a whimsical verb, creates fairytale activity
• Assonance of plosive ‘p’ gives sense of power and harmony

2. ‘On a cloud I saw a child’ ‘laughing’

• Religious imagery, characterisation of child as an angel
• ## Positive ideas about childhood, continues positive tone

Question 2

Intro to Innocence Stanza 2 - 2 techniques and analysis

Answer 2

1. “Pipe a song about a Lamb!”

• The Lamb is a clear allusion to Christ, pushed by the capitalisation of ‘Lamb’ suggesting this song could be the messages of religion
• The child commands the piper in an imperative tone, reinforcing the authority of innocence in Blake’s vision.

2. “So he wept to hear”

• Intense, powerful reaction, reinforcing the tone of the poem
• Tears of joy is a seemingly adult reaction, reinforcing the subversive relationship between the two

Question 3

Stanza 3

Answer 3

1. ‘Sing thy songs’ ‘So I sung’

• Call and response structure furthers obedience and inversion of power dynamics
• Emphasis on the importance of oral tradition

2. ‘I sung the same again While he wept with joy’

• Reformulation of ‘wept’ into a joyous weep, removing any ambiguity
• Emphasis that the message has the same impact, no matter how many times its heard by ‘same again’

Question 4

Stanza 4

Answer 4

1. ‘Write in a book that all may read’

• Book is a biblical allusion, reinforcing religious tones of the poem
• Determiner of ‘all’ denotes the universal value of the Bible

2. ‘He vanish’d from my sight And I pluck’d a hollow reed’

• ‘Vanish’d’ reinforces the supernatural child, underscoring religious themes
• ‘Hollow’ feels out of place, perhaps suggesting that organised religion has stripped the true meaning of the Bible

Question 5

Stanza 5

Answer 5

1. ‘And I’ x 3

• Repetition of this conjunction suggests urgency of action
• Attention to the personal pronoun ‘I’ underscores the importance of individual action and autonomy

2. ‘Stained the water clear’

• ‘Stained’ like ‘Hollow’ feels out of place.
• Perhaps suggestion that by writing and editing the words of God they become polluted and ‘stained’

Question 6

Intro to innocence - 3 broad contexts

Answer 6

1. Blake’s visions

• Blake claimed to see visions of the supernatural, most famously angels at peckham rye
• Foster Damon suggests: Blake’s visions were not supernatural: they were intensifications of normal experience.’
• However, he claims to have seen his brother’s spirit rise through the ceiling, suggesting a true belief in supernatural figures like the child in Introduction

2. Blake’s view on the bible

• Blake famously dismissed most of the bible as falsified, such as the resurrection and the virgin birth
• He did however see its value as a metaphor, and declared it ‘a great code of art’

Question 7

Into to innocence - 2 critical quotes

Answer 7

1. Kirvalidze and Davitishvili suggest that it serves as a “megametaphor” to express the overarching themes of Blake’s cycles.
2. Jon Mee observes that Blake’s poems “make use of traditional Christian symbolism,” but often in ways “at odds with the Christian orthodoxy of Blake’s time”