WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) 
LIFE
- worked as an engraver all his life.
- visions = works inspired by ‘spirits’
- born in London into a modest family --> poor NO formal education
Drawing, engraving and poetry
- 1788 developed an original engraving technique = ‘illuminated printing’ used to engrave all his poems
1789 Songs of Innocence = collection of poems focusing on childhood and innocence.
- Childhood = state of the soul connected with happiness and freedom
1794 Songs of Experience= Spiritual crisis
- Romantics’ enthusiasm for the Revolution --> in 1791 disillusioned with the tyranny in France = period of crisis
- more pessimistic view of life
- world of corruption and repression.
1790 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell =
- Opposites point of view on the same theme
innocence and experience-->“complementary opposites”- the two states coexist also in God the Creator.
OPPOSITES are necessary to Human Existence” --> - Lamb and Tyger
- Innocence = childhood -- qualities: love, compassion, sympathy, forgiveness, freedom -- garden of Eden
- Experience = world of adulthood ---- care, responsibilities, evil -- injustice, selfishness
THE POET AND THE CREATION
- Imagination = Divine Vision, a means “to see beyond material reality into the life of things”.
- God, the Child and the Poet share this power of vision = a creative power.
- The poet = prophet who can see more deeply into reality
Prophetic books = the struggle of the soul.
- Create his own mythology to describe his visions
- Reason is the enemy = INSTITUTIONS Government and Church
- The conditions of the workers are the result of the control of reason over people
STYLE, PATTERN AND LITERARY INFLUENCES:
- The Bible, Milton --- total vision of the world and its history.
- Style = simple and direct, simple vocabulary, everyday language, repetitions. Regular stress
- pattern and rhyme scheme, musical rhythm; familiar metres of ballads and nursery rhymes. But often the
- use of symbolism and abstract concepts= ideas and arguments are very complex
Mystical Poet = he celebrated the Spirit as a form of IMAGINATION
his poem is full of complex symbols wich make his poems very difficult to understand
- Nature is a sort of book which could be understood only throug imagination (so by the artist)