1.Our readings this week come from the Romantic poet William Blake. In preparation for Wednesday’s class, please read the following poems (found in Vol. E of the Norton Anthology): Introductory Poem (untitled), “The Lamb”, “The Chimney Sweeper” (There are two poems with this title; read them both), “The Tyger”, and “London.”
2.Choose one of the poems listed above to explore more deeply. For your chosen poem, please share a post on our blog in which you: a)explain what drew you to select this poem b) identify a line, pair of lines, or stanza that seems to you to be particularly meaningful or perplexing c) offer some analysis or explanation of your selected passage and d) connect it to the overall theme of the poem. Please post your work before our Zoom call on Wednesday, March 10th.
3. In addition to being a poet, William Blake was a fine artist and published illustrated editions of his own work, using a special engraving technique to create amazing prints that accompanied the two volumes of poetry that we are reading selections from: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Choose an image that accompanies one of the poems we are reading, and provide a brief comment that explains how the image and the poem work together. What do you see in the image you’ve selected that helps you understand the poem more fully? Be sure to include details from both the poem and the image in your discussion. Please post your response to the blog by Friday, March 12th.
4. Please read carefully the assignment (posted separately) for your first formal essay of the semester, together with the more general guidelines for essay writing I also shared. Please use our Slack channel to ask any questions you have about the assignment. Send me a short email by Sunday, March 14th, letting me know what text you are thinking about writing about and which topic you have chosen to pursue. Please combine the two into a single question you are asking. For example, if I am writing about masking or deceit in the short story “Bewitched,” perhaps my question might be, “What does “Bewitched” tell us about the linking of femininity and deceit?” Don’t worry if you have difficulty formulating a question; just do your best!
5. I have recorded a few words about Romanticism, particularly hoping to connect the dots between Rousseau’s early Romanticism and the Romantic poetry we will be reading over the next few weeks. You can access the video HERE, using Passcode: ^eo0.!gk Please watch this short video and share in the form of a comment on this post one thing that you see in either Blake or Rousseau that could be characterized as “Romantic.” Please do this by Wednesday, March 10th.
5. Stay tuned for your Group Project assignments. I am just waiting for a few stragglers to submit their Group Preference forms, and I will post the groups as soon as I can.
I think Romantic are really excit, as professor said “So the most important thing for a romantic writer is always going to be the portrayal of emotion and authentic feeling.” I think in the poem ” The Lamb” are really Romantic for me , in the poem, ” Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o’er the mead; gave thee clothing of delight,” as this quot said, the author using lamb describe as jesus, just like their child, from this I related to human, for example my mom she will gave everything that I need, sdhegave everything that she has, as in the video it said it is exisy and you can really feel it.
In the case of “The Lamb,” Blake also may be reminding us that both Jesus and the lamb are destined to be sacrificed – at that perhaps that is the fate of the child as well.
One thing that I see in Blake that could be characterized as “Romantic” is his rejection towards values and ideas of the industrialization and enlightenment. In the poem, “London” by Blake, he is constantly referring to the sadness of the city which has been overpowered by greed and money which shows that he values emotions and feelings. Also, his appreciation of innocence in childhood seems romantics. In the poem, he states about the harmful condition these children are working on and shows his sadness about how they should’ve been enjoying their innocent days instead of being exploited.
Yes, these are both important points. You are correct in identifying Blake’s interest in protecting childhood innocence and in drawing attention to the ways in which urbanization can lead to the degradation of childhood innocence and the exploitation of child laborers.
I choose the poem “London” by William Blake. The title of the poem drew me to select the poem “London”. A pair of lines that seems meaningful to me is In every cry of every Man, In every Infants cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear. These pair of lines mean that he sees pain in people’s eyes and the fears and tears in newborn babies. Everyone in the city of London is placed on restriction by law based on the population. William Blake can understand the feelings of people of being abused in the city life. The theme of the poem “London” is the city London is a dark and miserable place.
It is certainly the case that Blake paints a very bleak picture of the city. What do you think he means by “mind-forg’d manacles”? Also, explain what you mean when you say that people are restricted based on population. That needs to be clarified.
Two of the main takeaways from the Romantic era explained in the video were the new appreciation for childhood, nature, and setting emotion and feelings as their mode of expression. Through some of the poems by William Blake, there is a theme of feelings by children brought up in both of the “Chimney Sweeper” poems and the Introduction poem. Appreciation towards nature we see in “The lamb” where it portraits how an animal such as a lamb can be benefitting in the sense of clothing. And lastly, in “London” there is a dark feeling bring expressed through its writing as it touches on negative feelings by the people.
Yessenia, I think that all of the poems, even those like “The Lamb” that seem to be about sweetness and innocence, have a dark side. In the case of “The Lamb,” we know that the lamb (like Jesus whom he is compared to in the poem) is destined to be sacrificed.
“The Lamb” by Blake stuck out to me because it discusses the beauty of the world god has created. The Second stanza stuck out to me because the child realizes how the lamb came to be by the creation of god. I feel like this stanza shows that only the child in the world realizes how beautiful the earth is describing the nature around him. I think as a society we have lost this sense. With Covid it has caused out realities to be stuck inside and through the child’s perspective I was reminded of how beautiful the world is out there.
Thanks for connecting this poem to your own experience and perspective. At the same time that the boy and the lamb are connected through their beauty and their innocence, we also know that childhood is fleeting, and in the case of the lamb, that it will end with slaughter, so the poem has (for me, anyway) a sad undertone.
I choose “The Chimney Sweeper” by Blake because it very impressed me with poor children how seek joy amidst the sorrow. “Then down a green plain. leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun”. Even though their life would be “black” but they still full of innocence and be positive about the future. Also, Blake accuses of exploitation of children.
This is not a very full response. What do you think this dream is about? Why does Blake include it? Is it really the case, as the last line suggests, that if all do their duty, they need not fear harm? The children are comforted by the idea that they will be rewarded in the afterlife, but Blake knows that that does not justify their real-life suffering.
After watching the video, I got a better understanding of how romanticism is rather effortless, it’s the appreciation of the little and uncomplicated things. “The Lamb” by William Blake shows the appreciation of creation and I think that’s romantic. As to how God put in so much detail and work into something as gentle as a sheep and how everything has been designed and created in such a unique way. The lamb is shown as a remarkable presentation of God’s creation, pure and elegant.
I wouldn’t describe Romanticism as effortless at all. When we discussed the Introduction poem on Wednesday, the point I was trying to make is that Blake presents the poems in Songs of Innocence as though they were just as natural and spontaneous as the tune the piper plays on his flute, but they are actually carefully crafted and often have a very serious meaning.
I can definitely see romantic qualities in Blake’s poems. All of the poems provoke emotions really well through Blake’s usage of imagery, from blissfully singing in the countryside to dirty children on streets. Another romantic trait that might be shown is how pure and innocent kids get tainted when they enter the adult world. I specifically choose the first “The Chimney Sweeper” and in this poem Blake uses the descriptive word white twice. First when he talks about Tom and his white hair that cannot be tainted if he cuts his hair and the second time is when he describes the children being washed and becoming white again. I think Blake is trying to express how the children loses its pure and innocence when they have to enter the adult world and work.
Yes, I agree that one of the important messages of the poems we read this week is about the cruelty of child labor. We see this in both of the Chimney Sweeper poems. The image of an innocent child (and you are right to pay attention to the use of color and light here) having to descend into the soot filled chimney where he is literally “blackened” is the perfect expression of how Blake views child labor.
One thing I found to be interesting in Rosseau’s work “The Confessions” was his description of his childhood as being wonderful, and how he was surrounded by “the best people in the world” page 62. This was after Rousseau had just explained the tragic events that occurred as he was a child, and that he basically lost his entire immediate family before he even turned 10 years old. I believe this fits into the concept of Romanticism because it shows Rousseau focusing only on favorable and pleasant things about his childhood, and even though bad things happened, he looks at his childhood with feelings of gratitude and nostalgia. I believe this is because Rousseau wanted to formulate the idea of having a good childhood, because this at least gave him a more pleasant past to remember, almost like an escape from reality, after he had to deal with other more unpleasant things as he got older.
Yes, I think you are right to connect Rousseau’s description of his childhood with Romantic ideas about childhood in general as well as an element of nostalgia. It’s interesting to connect Rousseau to Blake in this respect. Blake agrees with Rousseau that childhood should be a time of innocence, but he is willing to call out all of the ways in which society fails to protect and shelter the innocent.