Blake

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  • Created by: Sabina
  • Created on: 29-05-14 16:36
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  • Blake
    • Blake's view on the innocence of childhood were in the minority - Believed everyone is born innocent
    • Theme from Experience often infiltrate Innocence
    • Romanticist: Blake and The Romanticists, imagination was a state of pure moral appreciation of beauty.
    • Innocence is often represented as the state of childhood.
      • In Experience their state, whether this is happiness, restriction, fear or sorrow is enforced by authority figures, such as parents.
        • Blake uses the experience of children throughout Experience to demonstrate control in society and the devastating effect this can have on the innocent.
          • Blake's critique explores the effect that controlling institutions  such as the church and the state have on society.
    • Blake's wife Catherine Boucher was unable to give her husband a child - which is possibly the reason for the abundance of child figures that feature in Songs of Innocence and of Experience
    • Industrial  Revolution
      • Children worked in harsh conditions and the majority of factory owners did little to protect these children.
      • Life in industrial towns had really poor standards of living.
      • Blake  grew up whilst the industrial revolution was taking over the domestic system.
        • He believed that the children should be able to flourish. Blake  DID NOT agree with the harsh treatment of childrenin these factories.
      • Blake witnessed children as young as 5 being forced to work, the ill lining the streets and revolting living conditions with huge families crammed into them.
        • The poem London was written during the French Revolution - Blake alludes to the revolution in London,arguably suggesting that the experience of living there could encourage a revolution on the streets of the capital.
    • Isaac Watt's Divine songs for children acted as cautionary tales to induce fear in children to ensure good behaviour.
      • Blake argued against society's expectations of children.
    • Blake was a NON-CONFORMIST
      • He believed in a DIRECT relationship with God, rather than one mediated by priests.
      • It was the institutionalised religion, used to control and restrict, that he  DISAGREED with.
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  • Man's perceptions are not bound by organs of perception; he perceives  more than sense can discover.

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