1757 – 1827. Both painter and poet, he was little known as an artist and almost unknown as a poet at the time of his death. His case is a typical example.

1757 – 1827

Both painter and poet, he was little known as an artist and almost unknown as a poet at the time of his death. His case is a typical example of the value and dangers of the refusal to accept conventions: his radical, religious, moral and political opinions, his dissatisfaction with the poetic tradition of his times and his restless search for new forms and techniques made him a socially isolated, poor and misunderstood artist. It was only in the mid-1920s that Blake’s visionary poetry began to be fully admired and since then he has been considered one of the most intellectually challenging and original artists.

Politically he was in favour of the

French and the American revolutions

A left-wing radical He attacked

national institutions and the Church of England

His works were a criticism of the suffering of the poor and the oppressed

He saw religion and culture as forms of social tyranny and instruments of oppression

Paine and Godwin, left –wing radicals

Rousseau – Blake’s vision of the Child is linked to the idea of “the good natural man”

Voltaire and Diderot – the individual had a right to happiness and pleasure without the restrictions of morality and religion

Raphael, Michelangelo and the Gothic art

Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish philosopher and mystic who claimed he had visions

The Bible and Milton

An original theory

He believed in the reality of a spiritual world but regarded Christianity - and the Church especially – as responsible for the fragmentation of consciousness and the dualism characterizing man’s life.

He substituted “complementary opposites” to “contraries”.

He stated: “Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate are necessary to Human Existence”.

JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE (1762-1814) HAS A SIMILAR CONCEPTION OF IMAGINATION. HE STATED THAT “THE VERY SHAPE AND EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD DEPENDED ENTIRELY ON THE VISION OF THE INDIVIDUAL IMAGINATION”

SONGS OF INNOCENCE

The world of innocence is unthreatening and fearless, full of joy and happiness. It is a pastoral Eden, peopled by such figures as the lamb and the child, both symbols of Christ.

SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

The world of experience is tainted by selfishness, cruelty and social injustice.Its symbol is the tiger, a disquieting creature, whose origins are lost “in the forests of the night”.

Each page of his poems was an engraving of a text surrounded by images and designs coloured by hand in watercolour

The text and drawings were meant to illustrate and intensify each other’s meaning

His language and syntax are fairly simple. Apparently naive style Plain Anglo-Saxon vocabulary Musicality, ambiguity, allusiveness Repetitions, refrain, regular stress

patterns Similarities with ballads, children’s songs,

hymns Complex simbologism – especially in his

visionary poems