Themes

Question 1

Innocence

Answer 1

Innocence: the condition essentially allied to childhood, a condition in which we can view the natural and human world without fear, and feel confident that we have a home in the world. Behind this, lies whole realm of biblical myth, in particular the garden of Eden, however there are significant differences between biblical Garden and Blakean innocence.

Question 2

Sexuality

Answer 2

Adam and Eve were ejected from the garden because of their accession to carnal knowledge, and throughout christianity there has been a connection between sex and the fall of man. For Blake, things were quite otherwise: the world of innocence is one of natural, unforced pleasure in sexuality, as well in all other things of the body. Prefigures Freud’s interest in natural sexual development.

Question 3

innocence v experience

Answer 3

Innocence however cannot last forever unchallenged, although it is always possible to prolong/regain it temporarily: through love, poetry etc..It is, however, inevitably under threat of being superseded as we move into adulthood and encounter cares, duties and responsibilities. But although this progression which is also awful from Grace is inevitable, it is also true that we make it much worse than it needs to be. We make it worse through the kinds of tyranny and harshness at the political level through the role of the moral law and ethic of punishment rather than forgiveness at the religious level and through selfishness, possessiveness and jealousy at the personal and psychological level.

Question 4

levels of experience (religious, political and personal)

Answer 4

For Blake these levels cannot be separated out. When we observe the inhumanity of urban life they have seen the imposition of some peoples will upon others, or we are witnessing the suppression of healthy individual life and ideology comprised of work power and repression. But it is at the same time true that the mind that places these shackles upon us is in an important sense, our own: Blake shows us not only the forces of violence at work in society and economy, he also showed us the processes of internalisation by means of which we absorb these forces inside ourselves and accept them without question and acceptance which kills off the all important development of the imagination inside us.