1.

Pre-Romantic tendencies
The eighteenth century, the century of the Enlightenment*, was eminently the Age of Reason,
whose literary-artistic expression was the Neoclassical doctrine. Neoclassicism*, with its
emphasis on order, discipline, harmony, elegance and decorum*, regarded art as the product
of civilisation, and cultivated its public relevance. Literature was called to deal with
matters of public interest, to bring the significant aspects of human life and behaviour into the
light of public attention. The optimism and pragmatism of a rational age which believed
in progress were reflected in literature as well, as is proved by the works of the great
Augustan writers (Steele, Addison, Pope, Swift, and Fielding).
Like any modern age, however, the century of the Enlightenment was not without paradoxes
and contradictions. For instance, the cult of Reason favoured an attitude of humanitarianism
and social benevolence, which in turn favoured the emergence of the cult of Feeling. The
interest in individual psychology, as well as the preoccupation of 18th century analytic
thought with the workings of the human mind, led to an increasing attention to emotional
response. The sentimental novel* (e.g. Samuel Richardson) is one manifestation of this
tendency.
The concern with personal, subjective experience is displayed not only in fiction, but also in a
new kind of meditative poetry, which became the vehicle for the expression of private feeling
and assumed a personal voice.
One trend in the 18th century poetry of meditation was the preference for the expression of
melancholy and dark thoughts, and for night as a setting. This new poetic trend ran counter to
the optimistic confidence of the Age of Reason, and the sensibility that it cultivated favoured
the rise of the Gothic novel.
2. The poetry of melancholy meditation
Edward Young is one of the most important representatives of this new kind of reflective
poetry, whose basic motifs were the shortness and sorrows of life and the inexorable passage
of time. His long poem in nine books, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), is the most outstanding
expression of this new spirit in poetry, and it exerted an immense influence both in England
and on the Continent. It consisted in long blank verse* meditations on such things as earthly
vanity, death and immortality. Its gloomy setting the churchyard, with tombstones lit by the
pale moon contributed to the birth of the taste for Gothic.
Young and other poets formed a distinct trend in the mid- eighteenth century, known as the
Graveyard School of poetry. It is in this tradition that one of the most popular poems in
English must be placed: Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray (1716-
1771). It begins with the contemplation of the landscape, which leads the poet to a sad
meditation on the short and simple annals* of the poor the joys and sorrows of the
country-folk, whose life had passed in complete anonymity. The perfect form of Grays poem
shows his classical training, but its subject and mood are pre- Romantic.
3. The interest in early poetry
Another tendency which announced a change in literary sensibility was a new sense of the
past, which contrasts with the Augustan focus on contemporary civilisation. This new interest
was reflected in the curiosity about primitive* poetry biblical poetry, Celtic* and Norse*
legend and mythology, and folk literature in general.
The most spectacular manifestation of this interest is the volume
Poems of Ossian, published in 1765 by James Macpherson (1736-
1796). Macpherson claimed to have translated these poems from the Gaelic or Erse*
language, and to have collected them in the Highlands of Scotland*. He also claimed that
their author was the legendary Irish bard and hero Ossian, supposed to have lived in the
3rd century A.D.
What Macpherson presented as a great primitive Celtic epic turned out to be entirely his own
imaginary creation, but its influence on the birth of Romanticism* in England and on the
Continent was huge.
Macphersons Ossianic poems are pieces of highly rhetorical poetic prose, imitating partly
the cadence of biblical verses and of Miltons blank verse. The lamentations of the blind bard
evoke an ancient world of heroic virtue, and misty, wild, sublime landscapes, and the
dominant tone is that of nostalgia and regret.
The fascination with the Middle Ages is another feature which illustrated the rise of the
Romantic sensibility. In 1765, Thomas Percy published a collection of mediaeval ballads,
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which awakened a steady interest in older poetic styles.
In 1770, young Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), aspiring to poetic fame, published a volume
of poems presented as belonging to the mediaeval poet-monk Thomas Rowley. These poems
displayed lyric grace and the promise of talent, but they proved to be (like the Ossianic poems)
entirely the product of Chattertons inflamed imagination. When his literary fraud was
exposed, Chatterton committed suicide. The coming generation of Romantic poets turned him
into a legend, regarding him as a martyr, the victim of an insensitive and hostile world.
in the section Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. If you have failed to
make the right match for every sentence, read again the previous subchapters.
4. The pre- Romantic sensibility and the interest in new poetic forms
The transition from the Augustan to the Romantic age was slow and long. Elements of a pre-
Romantic sensibility can be found all along the century, sometimes within the context of
Augustan conventions. The emphasis on sentimental response, the inspiration from folk myths
and legends, the interest in the local and national past, the interest in rural life and its contrast
with civilisation, the new feeling for nature these were features indicating that literary taste
was changing.
This change in taste concerned not only themes and subjects, but also literary forms.
Towards the end of the century, William Blake would call the heroic couplet* the great cage
of Augustan poetry, and indeed the tendency along the century was to abandon it for
poetic forms that allowed more freedom. A return to blank verse for which Shakespeare and
Milton were the great models allowed greater flexibility of expression. In the latter part of
the century, an interest developed in popular forms of poetry, such as the song and the ballad,
valued for their simplicity and directness by the first Romantics (William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge).
In the following subchapters, we shall look more closely at two important pre-Romantic
aspects of 18th century poetry: the development of a sentimental interest in rural life, and the
emergence of a distinct poetic attitude towards nature.
5. The rural universe
The emerging Age of Sensibility oriented the critical spirit, characteristic of the
Enlightenment, towards the highest achievement of mans Reason: civilisation itself. There
was a growing suspicion that civilisation may have a corrupting effect on mans innate
goodness. Under the influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau*, the state of nature began to be
idealised, and the
18th century abounded in optimistic utopias about an idyllic, patriarchal society in which men
could enjoy fully their natural right to freedom.
The sentimental opposition between town and country was to become a convention in 18th
century literature. The great novelists (e.g. Henry Fielding) would often associate the
turbulent, busy life of the city with moral confusion, and the simplicity of country life with
moral virtue.
6. The sentimental approach: Oliver Goldsmith
An idyllic view of the countryside is present in the poem The Deserted Village (1770), by
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774). Goldsmiths literary preferences were Neoclassic, but his
remarkable achievement is to have combined a sentimental theme with the elegant, balanced
form of the Augustan couplet. The poem is Goldsmiths reaction to a social and economic
reality: the enclosure* of land, a capitalist process which changed radically the life of the
traditional village.
Goldsmith sets in contrast the former happiness of Auburn (an idealised version of his native
village, in Ireland) with the desolation of the present, when the land is concentrated in the
hand of one only master. He remembers the days gone by, with their humble happiness
spent in the middle of a hard-working but cheerful and warm-hearted community. Their life
was measured then by the cycles of agricultural labour, alternating with the simple sports
(i.e. amusements) and pleasures of the moments of well-deserved leisure. Goldsmith
gives an idyllic picture of a rural paradise, in which man lives in harmony with nature and
enjoys health and plenty, innocence and ease, and in which toil becomes a pleasure.
This sentimental image of the loveliest village of the plain is only a memory, and the poet
constantly moves between the happy past and the sorrowful present. His evocation of the past
charms of sweet Auburn has an elegiac tone, and he laments the disintegration
of the traditional, stable rural civilisation.
Goldsmith blames the decay of the former way of country life on the increasing greed of man,
on the excessive concern with accumulation of wealth, and on the vice of luxury. His
village was an idyllic microcosm, a small but organic universe sustained by temperance and
virtue, but incapable to resist the pressure of the new economic tendencies.
7. Character sketch in The Deserted Village
The Deserted Village illustrates not only Goldsmiths sharp sense of observation in the
description of natural beauty and of the human scene, but also his art of character sketch. His
remembrance of the old days in Auburn focuses now and then on some member of the
community, whom he evokes in short, precise and vivid features.
Among his notable miniature portraits is that of the village schoolmaster, whose small
eccentricities are captured with affectionate humour. A memorable sentimental description is
that of the village preacher. Goldsmith emphasises the decency, moderation and humility of
his simple life, remote from towns, his complete lack of ambition and vanity, and his strong
attachment to the place and community which he serves. Firm in his moral guidance and a
severe judge of human wanderings, Goldsmiths parson is, however, a truly charitable soul,
to all the country dear.
8. The realistic approach: George Crabbe
Goldsmiths idealisation of rural life received a sharply realistic reply from a poet who also
continues the Augustan tradition: George Crabbe (1754-1832). His poem in rhymed
couplets The Village (1783) is an attack on those poetic conventions which created the
illusion of the innocence and happiness of country life. Crabbes medical practice afforded
him a first hand observation of the rural world, and the sentimental cult of its idyllic charm
had little to do with the realities that he encountered.
His poem aims to paint village life as Truth will paint it and as bards will not. Instead of the
cheerful ease, the innocent pleasures and the rewarding toil described in Goldsmiths
Deserted Village, Crabbe presents a sordid reality. For him, the sad truth of village life is the
peoples hopeless poverty, their many vices, their struggle with an unfriendly nature for the
daily bread. Despised and neglected by the rich, they lead a bitter existence, whose miseries
never end.
Crabbe denounces the unreality and artificiality of pastoral poetry, whose Muse knows
nothing of the real pains and cares of the peasants. The moralist in him could not accept to
disguise their deplorable fortune in tinsel trappings [i.e. glittering ornaments] of poetic pride.
The classical image of the happy shepherd playing his pipe in the fields is out of place in the
contemporary world, only a mechanic echo of other literary times.
To prolong this convention, painting everything in fair colours, means to deviate from
Truth and Nature. Crabbe pleads for a change in the poets attitude towards the subject of
country life, in the belief that its realistic reflection will at least awaken curiosity and
sympathy in the reader. The superficial praise of an idealised, conventional world serves only
the poets vanity. The peasant, overcome by labour and consumed with many cares, would
not get any comfort from such praise.
Crabbes poem is completely unromantic, removing the veil of poetic illusion from a subject
that was already a conventional one. However, his realism and critical spirit did not exclude
genuine compassion. His sympathetic interest in the life of humble people anticipates the
radical attitude of the first great English Romantic poet, William Wordsworth.
9. Robert Burns and the popular tradition
At about the same time, the Scottish peasant-poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) was opening a
path towards the Romantic revolution in poetry. Written in his native tongue, the collected
poems he published in
1786 were the authentic expression of a passionate nature, whose experiences were
fundamentally linked to the universe of rural life.
These poems are greatly indebted to the popular tradition of poetic forms (songs, ballads, etc.)
and they display either delicate sentimental lyricism or vigorous realism, spirit and humour.
Their intensely personal tone and their vividness and warmth in the description of the natural
scene contrasted sharply with the formal rigidity and didacticism of much late 18th century
poetry.
Burnss success as a poet confirmed the early Romantic belief in the close connection
between nature, spontaneity of feeling, and poetic imagination.
It was Burns who provided the lyrics for the song Auld Lang Syne, whose title means old
times or times past. They were partly Burnss composition, partly his transcription, as he
said, from an old mans singing.
10. Pre-Romantic nature poetry
One of the most significant shifts in poetic sensibility was the new attitude to nature,
manifest as early as the 1730s. The Augustans were interested in nature only to the extent
that it helped them emphasise the conquests of civilization. The conventional Augustan local
poem (or topographical poem*) looked at nature from the perspective of historical or
classical mythological associations. With James Thomson (1700-1748) and his long poem
The Seasons (1726-1730), nature, in its magnificence and diversity, becomes an object of
interest in itself.
11. James Thomson, The Seasons
In the Preface to the fourth part of The Seasons, Winter, Thomson confesses that he knows
of no other subject more elevating, more amusing, more ready to awake the poetical
enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment, than the works of Nature.
Thomsons ambitious poem in blank verse is remarkably inclusive: its descriptions of nature
occasion indeed frequent meditations on a variety of contemporary ideas and interests. It
contains reflections on the natural and social condition of man and on Nature as the
manifestation of the divine ordering mind, poetic renderings of current notions of natural
history, political comments, patriotic enthusiasm, praise of friends, etc.
In spite of its eclectic nature, The Seasons has a unity ensured by the recurrent themes and
motifs related to the observable natural universe. Each of the four parts of the poem describes
seasonal aspects of nature and rural life, with a remarkable attention to detail and precision of
notation. Thomson evokes the glory and joy of reviving nature in spring, the splendour of
summer, the peace of autumn bringer of Philosophic Melancholy , and the apparent
cruelty of winter. His poem educated, in many generations of readers, not only the perception
of nature, but also the feeling for it. As Dr. Samuel Johnson said, The reader of The Seasons
wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has felt
what Thomson impresses.
The Seasons marked an important moment in 18th century poetry. It appealed both to
the Augustans and to the Romantics, exerting a considerable influence on both of them.
Thomson practically inaugurated the trend of descriptive-meditative poetry, in which the
descriptive detail was often used in order to create a certain mood. His praise of nature and of
the countryside, as well as his glorification of retirement in solitude as the best state in
which to sing the works of nature, inspired many other poets along the 18th century.
Thomson is also famous for the patriotic lyrics that he wrote for the song Rule, Britannia, an
expression of national pride.
One of Thomsons great admirers was William Collins (1721-1759), whose work brings into
harmony the various tendencies in 18th century poetry. He preferred the classical form of the
ode*, and he displayed the Augustan taste for stylistic refinement, but his subjects anticipate
the Romantic sensibility. He was interested in the mediaeval past, in popular superstitions and
the supernatural, and his feeling for Nature is that of a pre-Romantic. He reaches perfection in
his famous Ode to Evening (1746), with its short, unrhymed stanzas, in which he captures
with precision and delicacy the crepuscular atmosphere.
12. William Cowper, The Task
Much closer in time to the beginning of the Romantic Age, the poem The Task (1785) by
William Cowper (1731-1800) reflects a similar attraction to the theme of nature. Like
Thomson and Collins, Cowper displays an Augustan concern for elegance and refinement in
expression, but his blank verse poem has a much more personal tone.
The Task has actually been described as a spiritual autobiography, in which a sensitive and
thoughtful Christian, living in retirement from the city, records his observations and
reflections. Passages of moral and political commentary, social satire, religious meditations
and character sketches accompany Cowpers celebration of rural domestic happiness and
communion with nature.
As a poet of nature, Cowper displays a remarkable eye for detail and a landscape-painters
sense of perspective. His meticulous descriptions of countryside scenery and animal life, of
the seasonal diversity of natural aspects, indicate an affectionate observer. The contemplation
of nature has a healing effect on Cowper, and his expressions of gratitude for the spiritual
comfort and superior joys that it offers anticipated the first generation of English Romantics
(W. Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge).
Cowpers love of nature is closely linked to his love of the countryside, which he opposes to
the civilisation of the city, with its vices and follies. He praises the simple pleasures, the peace
and quiet of village life, in which he can find shelter against depression and anxiety.
Retirement to the countryside does not mean for him idle solitude it is not isolation that he
seeks in rural nature, but the joy of communion with friends, and of simple, domestic
activities, like gardening. Rural domestic happiness seems to him the only bliss, / Paradise
that has survived the fall. Sometimes, however, he becomes aware of the instability
of this last retreat from the confusions and corruption of modern urban civilisation, fearing
that The town has tinged [i.e. affected] the country.
the one offered in the section Solutions and suggestions for SAQs, at the end of the unit. Read
again the fragment if you answer is significantly different.
Both Thomson and Cowper see a strong connection between love of nature and a
humanitarian spirit. Nature nurses the sympathy for our fellow beings, our sense of a
common fate for all humanity. A heart that is insensitive to nature is a hard heart, unfit for
human fellowship and dead to love and friendship both (Cowper).
The charms of nature have also an almost magic influence on human creativity and depth of
thought. These beliefs in Nature as a moral teacher and as a guide for imagination were
central to the creed of the first Romantics.
13. William Blake, the visionary artist
William Blake holds a unique place in the history of English literature. He was a relatively
marginal figure during his lifetime, exerting influence only on a small circle of friends and
admirers, and being regarded as an eccentric artist. It was in the latter half of the
19th century that he was rediscovered by a group of poets and painters, and recognised
as one of the most original creators.
Blakes late fame is due, to a large extent, to the special way in which he produced his work.
He was not only a poet, but also a gifted painter and engraver, and his creative personality
manifested itself in combined and complementary modes of expression. Blake did not publish
his poems in conventional printed form. He used a special method for engraving and printing
the handwritten text, which was accompanied by drawings and decorations. Each copy was
then coloured by hand, and this laborious process restricted the number of copies that Blake
could produce.
Apart from a volume of early verse, all Blakes major poems were composed in this way. The
combination of calligraphic text, picture and decoration reminds of the painful, minute work
of mediaeval miniaturists and their illuminated* manuscripts. In Blake, these various
dimensions of his works shed light on each other, widening the range of meanings.
14. Blake as a pre-Romantic poet
Blake is often regarded as a pre-Romantic poet, whose attitudes and concerns define him
sharply as an anti-Augustan. He was an admirer of Shakespeare, Milton, Gray, Thomson, and
Macpherson, and he rejected the classical standards of style, finding literary inspiration in the
simplicity and directness of popular poetry, in the tone and rhythms of Biblical psalms and
religious hymns.
Like other pre-Romantic poets, he turns his attention to the rural world, and displays the same
humanitarian spirit as his contemporaries. In his first great illuminated work, Songs
of Innocence and of Experience (1794), the rural setting, rendered in its pastoral simplicity,
represents symbolically the uncorrupt order of nature. The theme of childhood in this work
enables Blake to explore the opposition nature - civilisation. He associates nature with the
innocence of man in his condition before the Fall the childhood of humanity , and he
denounces the evils of civilisation, which oppresses man in the name of Reason and Progress.
15. Blake, the Romantic visionary
Blake is also frequently assimilated to the first generation of Romantic poets, owing to the
intensity with which he proclaimed the primacy of the Imagination over Reason and his deep
conviction that the poet was a seer, a prophet. Like the other English Romantics, Blake was a
rebel. He distrusted all systems of thought and institutions that restrained mans freedom
and imagination.
The classical Muses were for him the Daughters of Memory*, and he opposed to them the
Daughters of Inspiration, asserting that
Imagination has nothing to do with Memory. He is a true Romantic in his belief that poetic
creation is a spontaneous, unpremeditated act. He insisted on the visionary and inspired
quality of his writings he asserted, for instance: I copy Imagination, or I write when
commanded by spirits.
Blake worshipped Imagination as the only true way to spiritual freedom. His rebellion against
the systems which limit the energies of the Imagination takes a literary form in his
Prophetic Books*, in which Blake creates a mythology of his own. They are, in a way, a
tribute to Milton, whom Blake (like the other Romantics) venerated, and whom he saw as the
embodiment of the revolutionary impulse.
One of Blakes mythological creatures in these poems, Los*, says, in Blakes last poem,
Jerusalem: I must create a system, or be enslaved by another mans; / I will not reason and
compare: my business is to create. This is Blakes own creed, and his whole work, original
and strange, is one of the most powerful assertions of Romantic creativity.
16. The theme of childhood in Songs of Innocence
In 1789 the year of the French Revolution , Blake composed his first significant work:
Songs of Innocence. It was the year of a revolution in poetry as well. The extreme formal
simplicity and the apparent lack of sophistication of these short poems anticipated the
Romantic rejection of poetic diction*, with its repertoire of rhetorical conventions. Songs of
Innocence marked a new departure in English poetry, by their remarkable lyrical delicacy,
their clarity of expression and their musicality, which echoed the rhythms of popular verse.
As the poet emphasises in the Introduction, these are happy songs / Every child may joy
[i.e. enjoy] to hear. They build a charming picture of the universe of childhood, that is, of
the world seen through the eyes of the child. Poems like Infant Joy, The Echoing
Green, The Shepherd, Laughing Song, Spring, The Blossom, or Cradle Song offer
a glimpse into a world filled with simple, innocent delights, echoing with laughter and
sustained by love and by the belief in the goodness of nature.
The theme of childhood emerged in late 18th century poetry in the context of the rising cult of
Feeling, and the perception of childhood was greatly influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseaus
ideas, with which Blake was acquainted. Rousseau believed in the original innocence of man,
in his natural tendency to virtue, which a proper education should develop. According to
him, the pressure of civilisation and an education which cultivates the intellect at the
expense of the soul are likely to destroy in man the natural state of grace.
Blake filtered these ideas through his own intense idealism and his unconventional religious
beliefs. The innocence associated with childhood is for him the equivalent of the original state
of paradisal innocence. For Blake, childhood represents the unfallen state of man.
The world of Innocence is the paradise of freedom, love, gratified desire, and absence of
frustration or inhibition. It is a world in which evil has not penetrated and in which there is no
suffering. The pastoral setting symbolises the closeness of man to a benevolent nature and the
bliss enjoyed by man in Paradise.
Besides the children themselves, who express their candid feelings of piety and uninhibited
joy, the Songs of Innocence display protective figures like the caring mother or nurse, the
guardian angel, the shepherd, or even Jesus.
The pastoral figure of the shepherd receives in Blake a Christian connotation. The good
shepherd, taking care of his flock of innocent lambs, is a biblical allusion, suggesting the
childs closeness to a protective divinity.
The adult figures represented in these poems share the childs freshness of perception and
capacity for joy. The nurse, in Nurses Song, allows the children more time to play on the
green [i.e. meadow], although the sun has set, because she has the empathic understanding of
the childrens need for freedom. In The Echoing Green, Old John, with white hair, can
laugh away care, as the happiness of the children playing around him and the animation of
nature in Spring enable him to recreate his own joys of childhood.
In these poems, Innocence, associated with childhood, does not mean ignorance. The child
has a kind of wisdom which comes from the freshness and freedom of his imagination. Blake
rejected the praise of Reason as mans supreme faculty and proclaimed instead the importance
of mans Poetic Genius. Throughout his work, Blake identifies Jesus with the Imagination,
and every child is a manifestation of the Divine Imagination in the world.
17. Ironic implications in Songs of Innocence
Blakes graceful Songs of Innocence may appear to be simple and transparent, but, often, the
reader cannot help noticing paradoxes and contradictions. Beyond the childrens
innocent visions of happiness and harmony, a gloomy reality makes itself felt sometimes.
In The Chimney Sweeper*, for instance, the reader cannot miss the implicit reference to the
social reality of childrens exploitation and cruel treatment, but the child in the poem is
comforted by the vision of the Angel, which is a promise of divine mercy.
In The Little Black Boy an anti-slavery poem , the child has a wonderful vision of all souls
freed from their clouds of flesh black or white , standing equal before God, when this
life ends. Like the chimney sweeper, the little black boy is protected by his imagination and
finds the same comfort for the present sorrows in the Christian promise of a happy afterlife.
However, the ironic implication in the poem is that the English colonisers taught
Christianity to the natives only to be able to exert better control over them.
18. The fall from Innocence: Songs of Experience
Blake developed such implications into open statements, full of indignation and anger, in the
poems that he added in 1794: the Songs of Experience. The complete work offered now
a set of contrary symbolic visions of man, nature, society and divinity.
The serene and peaceful pastoral setting of the world of Innocence is set in opposition
with the sombre world of Experience, in which mans lot is hard work, disease, poverty and
oppression. The fall from the paradise of Innocence to Experience is the entrance in a world
of rules and constraints, of stony laws*, which deny man his freedom.
In the fallen state of Experience, love and joy have been replaced by fear, hate, envy and
deceit. A poem like A Poison Tree points out the murderous effects of secret hate; The Clod
and the Pebble contrasts selfless with selfish love, and Nurses Song shows the jealousy
consuming an adult who has lost the vision of Innocence.
In Songs of Experience, the ethical and social implications are more obvious. The world is
seen through the eyes of an angry observer, protesting against the evils of his time. Blakes
speakers in these poems are often bitter and ironic, even sarcastic. The poet attacks the
tyranny exercised on the individual by the church and state, the thirst for war, the greed of
the powerful and their indifference to the sufferings caused by social injustice.
The source of corruption in the world of Experience and the impediments to happiness are as
much in the systems regulating social life as in the individual heart and mind. In London, for
instance, it is suggested that human suffering and oppression is the result of mind-forged
manacles*, i.e. of the prejudices and constraints with which man enchains his own mind,
or the mind of others.
19. Knowledge in the world of Experience
The clarity and directness of Songs of Innocence is replaced, in Songs of Experience, by
ambiguity and even obscurity, and the rhythms of the poems are also more difficult. This
suggests that the world of Experience is more opaque and uncertain.
The counterpart of The Lamb in Songs of Experience is The Tyger* and this pair of poems
illustrates very well the contrastive vision in Blakes work. The speaker in the latter poem
wonders not only who created the fearful symmetry of the powerful, dangerous tiger, but
also if this creator is also that of the gentle lamb. The two stanzas of The Lamb contain the
childs simple, innocent question (Little Lamb, who made thee [i.e. you]?) and his own
answer, while The Tyger consists only in an accumulation of questions, with no explicit
answer. The implication is that knowledge in the state of Experience is always incomplete and
fragmentary, provoking more anxiety than certainty.
20. The double vision in Blakes Songs
Several other poems in Songs of Experience have a counterpart in Songs of Experience,
bearing even the same titles. There is a Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Experience as well, and
he is also a child, but he seems to be fully aware of his condition in an unjust world. He
displays, in fact, a double awareness of his own innocence and of the hypocritical and cruel
world around him.
One of the targets of Blakes critical attacks is the Church. A deeply religious person, Blake
hated nevertheless the church as an institution, seeing it as an instrument of oppression and a
source of corruption. The church, with its mysteries*, was responsible, in Blakes view, for
keeping man at a distance from God.
The Chimney Sweeper in Songs of Experience is bitterly ironic about the way in which God,
and His Priest, and King make up a Heaven of our misery. The idea of Heaven as a reward
of happiness for earthly misery, like that of Hell as a punishment for sin, was seen by Blake as
an instrument by which the church kept men in a state of obedience.
Blake made in fact a distinction between the God of the Old Testament and God of the
New Testament. The former is represented in Blakes work (the Prophetic Books
included) as an angry God, a stern, tyrannical figure, imposing constraints and inflicting
punishment. This is the God of the world of Experience, served by the institutionalised
churches, which are thus strengthening their own power.
The two poems entitled Holy Thursday* deal with the hypocrisy of the church, which allows
the rich and powerful of this world to ease their conscience and buy Heaven by occasional
and festive acts of charity. In the poem of Innocence, this sad reality is shadowed by the
speakers idyllic description of the poor children of London, compared with flowers and
Thames waters, or with a multitude of lambs.
In the counterpart poem, in Songs of Experience, the spectator to the same scene has a quite
different vision. He sees nothing holy in the beautiful picture, since those are babes
reduced to misery, in a country that is rich and fruitful. The angry speaker protests against
the duplicity of a society that feeds its poor with cold and usurous* hand.
Such corresponding poems illustrate the fact that Innocence and Experience are not
necessarily to be associated with ages in mans life, but with ways of seeing and feeling. They
reveal, indeed, as Blake indicated in the subtitle, contrary states of the human soul, which
lead to contrary visions.
Contraries are essential to progression, in Blakes view: Attraction and Repulsion, Reason
and Energy*, Love and Hate are necessary to Human existence. Blakes Songs suggest that
Innocence and Experience are not only inevitable stages in human growth, but also
complementary aspects of mans imagination.
21.Summary
This unit aims at enlarging your picture of the literary diversity of the 18th century, by
focusing on those tendencies in poetry which prefigure the Romantic Age.
The transition from the Age of Reason to the Age of Feeling in the 18th century was
accompanied by changes in literary taste. The first subchapter of this unit deals with two
prominent features announcing the Romantic sensibility. One of them is the emergence of a
kind of meditative poetry fond of melancholy themes and gloomy
settings. The Graveyard poets (e. g. Edward Young and Thomas Gray) illustrate this new
trend. The other feature is primitivism, the interest in early poetry. The fascination of James
Macpherson with Britains Celtic past, and of Thomas Chatterton with the Middle Ages
anticipates the Romantic spirit.
In subchapter 6.2., you have been acquainted with two poets who turned their attention to the
rural universe. Oliver Goldsmith emphasises the idyllic happiness of the traditional rural
civilisation, now threatened by the march of Progress. George Crabbe adopts a more realistic
and critical view. He condemns the literary habit of idealising the countryside, and seeks to
arouse compassion for the life of labour and poverty of the English peasant.
Another feature of 18th century pre-Romantic poetry is the perception of rural life in its close
connection with Nature. The theme of Nature in pre-Romantic poetry is sometimes closely
associated with the opposition country-town, nature-civilisation.
Subchapter 6.3. deals with the way in which poets like James Thomson, William Collins and
William Cowper approach the theme of Nature. Their poetry displays an unprecedented
attention to natural detail, and they acknowledge Natures subtle influence on mans thoughts,
imagination and feelings.
The last subchapter, 6.4., presents the outstanding figure of William Blake, in whose work
pre-Romantic and Romantic elements meet. His Songs of Innocence and of Experience are
the testimony of the visionary artist, who sees the opposition nature-civilisation in the light of
the myth of Paradise and of the Fall.
The theme of childhood is examined in several Songs, in its relation with the two contrary
states of the human soul: Innocence and Experience. The latter may be also seen as
complementary aspects of poetic imagination, as Blakes double poems suggest. The same
theme and situation acquires contrary implications, the vision of Innocence and the vision of
Experience completing each other.