London

Question 1

London: Brief summary

Answer 1

A speaker (could be seen as Blake) is wandering down the streets of London, encountering the plight of poverty and suffering of its citizens. He indicts the abuse of power of the authorities and how their power is not used to benefit society as child labour, prostitution, and corruption permeated London.

Question 2

London: Context (4)

Answer 2

• He was anti-establishment (government, church etc) and was celebratory regarding the rise of democracy within the French revolution - he wanted the same liberation for the UK.
• He was a Christian but opposed the established church as he saw the hypocrisy within it and its oppressive nature; he vehemently (strongly) opposed the idea of the church supporting the people, he believed it did the opposite.
• He was a Romantic poet, these poets believed that nature was awe-inspiring but also produced terror. This spiritual connection was known as the sublime. Blake contorts the Romantic sublime ideas of nature through pairing it with the image of corruption - this awe-inspiring connection to nature and the world is being shattered by the oppressive authoritarian control.
• Blake had two poetry collections, “the songs of innocence” which focused on the beauty and peace of nature - a typical Romantic trope. His other collection was “the songs of experience”, London belonging to this, which laments the loss of innocence in the face of mass corruption and devastation.

Question 3

“chartered” “mind-forged manacles” “mark”

Answer 3

• A semantic field of oppression permeates the poem with Blake choosing a restricted lexis: “chartered”, “mind-forged manacles” and “mark”.
• He describes the “Thames”, naturally free flowing, to have become “chartered”, connoting restricting. He is scathing of the sheer control the authorities have, it even seeping down into nature - the oppression is so powerful that even nature is not exempt from its detrimental impact. This links back to tropes of Romantic poetry, centralising their poetry around nature. Blake inverts this and makes it current with the bleak setting he is in, reinforcing how the awe-inspiring sublimity of nature is being tainted through political corruptness.
• As “chartered” also refers to rights and privileges, Blake is implicitly highlighting how this restriction derives from those who are privileged: their privileges enable them to oppress the lower classes for their own benefit.
• He politically critiques the abuse of power of the establishment. Their oppression is so deep, it has formed these “manacles” around individuals minds, thus they are confined to the misery that the authorities have imprisoned them too. “Manacles” are made of metal bands intertwined together, mimicking how the people in London are inextricably intertwined with their misery and oppression - the “manacles” are inescapable as they are “mind-forged”, making them impossible to physically escape.

Question 4

“In every infant’s cry of fear”

Answer 4

• Blake denounces the corruption of youth, reinforcing its direct link with authoritarian abuse of power and oppression - innocent children fall victim to their malevolent schemes.
• The use of anaphora “in every” mimics the cyclical and sempiternal torturing the citizens in London are subject to - in every crevice of London there is mass suffering, the “infants” not being except from this.
• The cyclical suffering replicated through the anaphora is shown through “in every infant’s cry of fear”. The idea of an “infant” connoting innocence, and “fear” connoting terror is oxymoronic. These juxtaposing images show how the innocence of youth has been corrupted and stolen as they have already been tainted by this exploitative setting. This reinforces the bleak pessimistic tone Blake creates - nobody can leave unscathed from this corruption as they do this to every “infant” once it is born.
• A motif of fear and distress is depicted through the youth as in both stanza 2 and 4 it references the “infants cry of fear” and “new-born infants tear”. As the poem progresses, Blake divulges the bleakness of “infants” being aware of its treacherous surroundings, yet in stanza 4 he contorts this to a “new-born”. He is perhaps suggesting that the deeper we understand London, we realise the younger it is able to corrupt and poison.

Question 5

“black’ning church appalls”

Answer 5

• Stanza 3 is Blake’s stark criticism of establishment. As mentioned, he favoured a mass revolt akin to the French revolution for London to reverse the “marks” it is staining its citizens with.
• The image of “black’ning church appalls” could literally show how the church has been covered in soot because of the industrial revolution. Symbolically, as “black’ning” connotes staining, it implies how the establishment of the church is tainting and staining the true meaning of religion. Within the bible, Jesus favoured agape, yet Blake sees how these morals are abandoned by the church as they neglect a love for all and care more for acquiring wealth.
• It is important to mention that Blake is not criticising religion, as he is religious himself, but is criticising the corruptness that pervaded that an establishment set to act in the ‘name of God’.

Question 6

London: Mix of enjambment and endstops

Answer 6

• Blake uses a mix of enjambment and end stops to replicate the illusion of freedom London’s citizens are given.
• The enjambment representing this illusion as the line continues, emulating how they believe their lives are free and boundless.
• This juxtaposes the end stops where the lines are paused and stopped, replicating how the lives of those who live in London are stopped and broken by the authorities that control them.

Question 7

London: Quatrains and regular ABAB rhyme

Answer 7

• Blake uses uniformed quatrains paired with a regular ABAB rhyme to emulate the mass oppression and restriction the lower classes were subjected to - they were oppressed by the establishment chaining them to these “mind-forged manacles”.
• As the stanza length and rhyme is not broken, Blake uses this to mimic how this control seems unbreakable and sempiternal.

Question 8

London: Iambic tetrameter

Answer 8

• Definition: each line has 8 syllables.
• The consistent iambic tetrameter heightens the motif of oppression that permeates the poem; there is no freedom to escape this control.
• Blake provides a glimmer of hope when he breaks the iambic tetrameter on “marks of weakness, mark of woe”. He could be implying that there is hope to break free from this oppression if London was to be united against the establishments that control them.

Question 9

London: 3rd stanza hear

Answer 9

• Beginning letter of each word from the 3rd stanza spells out HEAR (How Every And Runs).
• This could be Blake trying to encourage his reader to use their senses to witness, understand and stand up to the injustice that surrounds them. As their other senses may be diminished due to these metaphorical “manacles” they hear, he urges them to understand the plight they are enduring and make a stand.