Studying William Blake in Context Dr. David Higgins

hello my name is David Higgins and our lecturer in English literature the University of Leeds I'm a specialist in literature of the Romantic period and one of the most significant writers of that period is the poet and artist William Blake Blake is a difficult author who had very unconventional views for his time and over the course of his career developed a complex private mythology this can make some of his work difficult to understand although Songs of Innocence and of experience is more accessible than most of his illustrative books the aim of this podcast is to help you to understand what Blake's trying to do in this work by placing it in the context of attitudes to childhood in the late 18th century and it's an example of some of the things we do at university level where we're really often very concerned with placing text within the historical context and thinking about how they reflect debates of a particular period let's start with the title page you'll see that the full title is Songs of Innocence and of experience showing the two contrary states of the human soul and I really want to emphasize the significance of Songs and contrary States and I'm going to talk about both of those aspects of this text there's also the image of course which is crucial there are these two carrying human figures and then what seemed to be flames above them and critics tend to see these two figures as representing Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden for disobeying God Blake is obsessed with the notion of a fall from Paradise humanity have lost access to a paradise he associates very much with childhood now Blake's understanding of the fall is very different from that in Christian thought so as I was saying Christian theology understands the fall of man as the result of Adam needs disappearance of God's injunction not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge blake sees the fool very differently he sees it as having been caused by human beings and particularly by human desire to construct institutions that restrain and constrain people's desires and people's freedom and this notion of freedom and the way in which freedom may be restricted is something that he explores in this text why songs the sorts of meters that is the rhythm of these texts that Blake uses a ones associated with with children's verse and with popular song fat ballads and hymns so for example you could take a poem like the divine image and sing it to the tune of a Christmas carol like while Shepherds watch their flocks by night while Shepherds watch their flocks by night to mercy pity peace and love we'll pray in their distress I won't carry on but you get the point so even though Songs of Innocence and experience isn't necessarily aimed at children it's using a form that's accessible to children and also accessible I suppose to people who weren't necessarily highly literate and highly educated because it reflects songs and perhaps popular verse that they may have heard in other contexts one of the things that Blake's doing in this text is engaging with the sorts of verse that was written for children in the period and doing something to that genre much 18th century children's verse was religious and didactic and by didactic I mean that it was designed to teach a moral lesson meant to inculcate duty or virtue or whatever in contrast blank verse tends to refuse to draw simple morals and emphasizes imaginative freedom so he uses a lot of biblical imagery particularly in Songs of Innocence but he's very much deposed to conventional Christianity and he sees Christianity is tied up with government power and government oppression as si Caesar of the people now in the 18th century and Blanks writing that the this right at the end of the 18th century there's still a very strong tradition of Christian sort the sees children as rather like evil in whose natural maliciousness needs correction and if you've ever read great expectations which is a novel we teach the first years at Leeds PIP is very much mistreated by his sister Guardian and her cronies and they think of him is naturally vicious a naturally telling towards a vice or evil and that sort of assumption is very prevalent in the 18th century and it's something that Blake's very concerned with and concerned argue against Blake isn't alone in this there are other writers and educationalists people like Locke and Rousseau who also emphasize childish innocence and as it were benevolent natural tendencies if properly educated one of the major hymn writers of the 18th century was Isaac Watts and his divine songs attempted in an easy language for the use of children which has published first published in 1715 but was published in numerous editions throughout the 18th century this text gives a sense of what I mean by didactic and I should say that I'm not sort of setting up what's here is someone to be marked I mean there's something about these songs I think that for a modern aunt audiences is odd and uncomfortable but he is a very fine hymn writer and I should emphasize that to be fair to him so this is the title page to his text you see the full title there and then a biblical reference out of the mouths of babes and sucklings that has perfected praise and this notion of praise is really important to us the idea that these songs should be among other things praising God and thanking God for the gift of life his preface emphasizes the purpose of the songs is to give children a relish for virtue and religion so they're trying to teach children lessons and they very clearly meant to inculcate piety and good morals and so on and you can see this from the contents page this isn't the complete content but it's the first first page the menu you get a sense of the sorts of things that what is interested in inculcating so I won't read them all but just to pick out whew the first one a general song appraised God lower down the excellency of the Bible heaven and hell which I'll come back to the advantages of early religion against line against quarreling and fighting against idleness and mischief against evil company obedience to parents so this is about virtue restraint obedience duty what imagines children singing these songs am i singing these songs they learn to embody the sort of rules and regulations that are ascribed within within the text and there's a real emphasis here I think on what you shouldn't do on resisting sin and temptation it might remind us of a couplet from Blake's poem the garden of love from Songs of Experience and the gates of this chapel was shut and thou shalt not reach over the door this notion of thou shalt not which of course Blake has taken from the Ten Commandments thou shalt not kill etc it's something he finds very problematic he thinks of Orthodox Christianity as basically telling people what they can't do rather than allowing people the freedom to express themselves and express their imaginations so he's really coming it charge and coming human life from the opposite end of the spectrum from watts and the notion of writing songs to tell people what not to do is it something that Blake's really not comfortable with and we see that in Songs of Innocence and of experience we can think about what Blake's blame I be doing with popular songs like what's in a bit more detail by thinking about one of whatsis songs heaven and hell I just read it and just remember this is meant to be sung by a young child there is beyond the sky a heaven of joy and love and holy children when they die go to that world above there is a dreadful hell and everlasting pains they're sinners must we Devils dwell in darkness fire and chains can such a wretch as I escape this curse at end and may I hope wherever I die I shelter heaven at end then will I read and pray will I have life and breath lest I should be cut off today and sent to eternal death this is not something I imagined that contemporary educationalists would recommend for for young children because there's a great deal of threat this song it's about the promise of heaven but it's also what happens to you if you're bad if you misbehave if you don't follow the rules and regulations of society you will go to hell and you'll go to eternal death you will never get God's love so it's quite a sort of ominous text I think and also the child imagined is imagined to imagine themselves as a wretch so unhappy and despicable someone born into sin there's no sense there that the child is automatically sort of innocent and virtuous so it's and this is something that Blake's really arguing against I think in his text um I move on now to talk about a text that Blake wrote he first probably Songs of Innocence in 1789 and then published innocence and experience together in 1794 and among other things in between that that time he wrote met the Marriage of Heaven and Hell which was published in 1790 Blake thinks about Heaven and Hell in a very unorthodox way and very differently from what so thinking about how Blake conceives heaven and hell can help us understand his other texts as well so in this text Blake inverts Orthodox Christian ideas of heaven and hell heaven in this text becomes something negative and problematic he'll become something positive and rather celebratory I think I have here a couple of quotations from the text to give a sense of what I'm arguing without contraries says Blake is no progression attraction and repulsion reason and energy love and hate unnecessary to human experience from these contraries spring what the religious call good and evil good is the passive that obeys reason evil is the active springing from energy it's quite an interesting take here on the idea of heaven hell and if you like an interesting reading of what's his song if in what's his song heaven is what you get if you're controlled restrained obedient if you stay within boundaries and hell is punishment again if you step over boundaries Blake thinks of these things somewhat differently evil or hell he argues in this text made me actually about freedom and about human expression and human individuality may not be a problem good may be more of a problem because good is about control restraint and limits but he also imagines a sort of relationship between these two things that somehow productive and part of human life so the idea of these contrary states that he refers to in the title page of Songs of Innocence and of experience these aren't necessarily completely in opposition there might be a relationship and a productive relationship between these contrary States one thing I would should say though it's that we have to be careful I think that with any blank Texas saying this is what Blake thought his takes try out lots of different ideas and claims not all of which fit together very well we shouldn't treat any bit of them or any particular utterance as his sort of--they're you on anything and in fact to try and take a single view from any of his Texas to miss the point whatever they are they're not meant to be didactic they're not meant to tell you what to think unlike lots of songs their mentor as it were stimulate your own imagination an example of what I mean is in the marriage of Heaven and Hell there's a long list of what Blake calls proverbs of he'll some of which are quite difficult to understand some of which is deliberately provocative some of which are deliberately confusing and sometimes these proverbs are sort of quoted out of context as if Blake said them but he didn't they're written as Proverbs of Hell what the historical blanks relationship to them was is complex and ambiguous I just picked sort of a random three examples on the slide the first probably the most famous one is the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom Blake's not necessarily putting that as a view that we should all buy into but he's he's suggesting that there might be things that one might learn by going too far by crossing boundaries by being excessive the next one better murder a sleeping infant in its cradle the nurse enacted desires probably the most provocative of all of them I think and again we shouldn't necessarily see see this problem as advocating child murder that one could see it as that the idea is it's a revoked avoid making us think about what what are the negative things are not acting on desires of repressing once there's eyes even if those desires are problematic and even if there's his eyes are harmful to others finally the pride of the peacock is the glory of God and blanks being deliberately provocative here again he's picking one of the seven deadly sins in Christian theology pride and suggesting that there's something good something to be celebrated about pride just as at other points is the rights as he suggests as things to be celebrated about greed or about lust so for Blake traditional Christian theology doesn't necessarily articulate in an accurate way what human experience is really like the complexity of human experiences and the fact that things that might be problematic might seem sinful can also be beneficial and liberating and that's what Blake's really interested in I think so to return to the Songs of Innocence they're not necessarily aimed at children but they are about childhood in various forms they reflect his knowledge and reading of 18th century children's verse and they also reflect his unorthodox religious views unlike most children's verse at the time they emphasized freedom imagination and are often quite critical of authority the imagery is often pastoral that is it refers to a sort of notion of idyllic country life and often has religious resonances notions of lambs and shepherds and so on going back to language associated with Jesus in the New Testament and I've just picked up two Songs of Innocence to give you a sense of what I think's interesting about what Blake's doing and how it might relate to what someone like what's is doing the first one is the nurse's song from Songs of Innocence when the voice of children are heard on the green and laughing is heard on the hill my heart is at rest within my breast and everything else is still then come home my children the Sun has gone down and the dews of night arise come come leave of play and let us away till the morning appears in the skies no no let us play for it is yet day and we cannot go to sleep besides in the sky little birds fly and the hills are all covered with sheep well well go and play - the light fades away and then go home to bed the little ones leaped and shouted and laughed and all the hills echo it this is if you like the opposites towards his songs because it's about a dialogue between adults and children the nurse wants the children to come home at the end of the day the time for play is over the children don't want to do that they want to carry on as children will they're not accepting the boundaries set by the adult by the nurse but obviously what's crucial here is the nurse responds to them the nurse doesn't then lay down the law the learner actually says okay then you can play for longer now that may seem like quite a sort of trivial thing but it's actually really important because it suggests a very different sort of relationship between adult and child for the relationship imagined by watts which is all about the adult world telling children what the boundaries are and exactly how they should behave this is much more of a dialogue if you like and there's a real sense I think of a freedom and joy and you see that in the image accompanying the poem so I mean one could try and find sort of dark sinister overtones in this poem perhaps the idea of the Jews of night arising and so on but I think you know of all the times innocent innocence this is one of the most purely innocent but as you're probably aware some of the other poems in innocence and more complex and more troubled and more inflected by by darkness and of course the analog of the nurse's song and experience there's another poem in experience called the nurses song is itself much much darker than this one and much more about bitterness are much more about a sort of alienation between adults and children but I'm going to pick now the chimney sweeper from innocence and again there's a more as a darker more sinister version of the chimney sweep and experience but even the one in innocence I think is rather troubled a problematic when my mother died I was very young and my father sold me or yet my tongue kiss scarcely cry weep weep weep weep so your chimneys I sweep and then soot I sleep there's little tom de coeur who cried in his head that curled like a lamb's back was shaved so I said hush Tom never mind it for when your heads bare you know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair and so he was quiet and that very night as tom was asleeping he had such a sight that thousands of sweepers dick Joe Ned and Jack were all of them locked up in coffins of black and by came an angel who had a bright key and he opened the coffins have set them all free then down a green plane leaping laughing they run and wash in a river and shine in the Sun then naked and whites all their bags left behind they rise upon clouds of sport in the wind and the angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy he'd have God for his father and never want joy and so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark and got with our bags and our brushes to work that the morning was cold tom was happy and warm so if all do their duty they need not fear harm this is I think a more complex poem than the nurses saw there's a social context to this there are a lot of chimney sweeps in London at the end of the 18th century it was very dangerous labor it caused very bad physical ailments to the small children who did it who lived in position the conditions are terrible poverty and often died at a very early age and there was quite a lot of controversy about it in the newspapers of the time which blade would have been well aware of so the figure of the chimney sweep is a figure than might represent I suppose the poorest and most apparently insignificant in society but also might be seen as a figure of oppression and the way in which as it were the rich for blank might exploit the most poor and vulnerable particularly children so there's that social context which I think is quite important one of the interesting things about this poem is is what this poem has to say about the imagination it emphasizes this this dream the Tom has of an angel and it seems to be a dream of innocence a dream of pastoral celebration down a green plane leaping laughing they run but of course it's a dream it's a dream that makes him feel better about his lot that makes him more accepting of his life and accepting of his lowly status accepting of his suffering that's not necessarily a good thing I don't think for blank angels in Blake can often be rather problematic rather similar figures and note here that the angel is telling Tom what to think if he'd be a good boy he'd have got for his father and never won't join the sort of thing that you might find in one of Isaac Watts --is hymns and I think if one positions this poem or this song in the context of the whole of Songs of Innocence and experience it should make a suspicious of this notion of of moralizing of telling children what they shall they should behave and how they should think about God and basically the latest sort of you know carrion stop moaning and then things would be okay that one could read this poem as about ideology as about the way in which religion in this case or other forms of social control might try and find ways of controlling people by offering them some sort of better life but a long way in the future a life after death in this case and one could see it as an example of what Marx called religion is the opiate of the masses as a way of controlling keeping people restrain and keeping people no soil in the bijon there are other ways of reading this poem as well but that I think this is quite a viable reading of the poem so in the case of the chimney sweeps themselves the moral so if all do their duty they need not fear harm is palpably untrue if chimney sweeps do their duty if they're obedient and docile and do what lets those to do they will be harmed they will suffer they will get ill they will die young perhaps this line is aimed at somebody else perhaps it's aimed at the reader or more broadly at social institutions perhaps is asking the reader to think about what their duty might be to the poor to the insignificant the unfortunate that children who can't stand up for themselves so there is moralizing in this text but it's quite different from the moralizing in watts of songs it's much more challenging I think and it's much less perhaps aimed at children and much more enter the reader and when it is aimed at the children I when the angel talks at Tom I think there's a sort of irony here or at least the question mark over the validity of that moral and something you see I think very clearly in this poem is how innocence is vulnerable it's always liable to abuse and corruption and of course that's an idea that bloke really develops in songs of experience so to conclude in terms of experience Blake as I say we've visits these representations of childhood from innocence but the more and more jaundice the more cynical eye if you like but we shouldn't think of it as innocence good experience bad going back to the quote from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell without contraries there is no progression so having an understanding of the corruption of innocence may be important because it means you're recognizing a problem both these states both innocence experience embodied truths about human life I also think there's a danger with Blake much so liking that that he can be made into a bit of a hero and if you've read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books which I think are fantastic but Blake in that they're very Blake Ian and Blake in that isn't sort of here I think in for his critique of Christianity and particularly I think the book is quite critical of the Catholic Church and sees the Catholic churches as a form of sort of social control um and I'm disagreeing with Philip Pullman but I think there is something problematic about that it's very easy to say oh isn't the church terrible always an exhale they're they're controlling everyone they're oppressing everyone well actually I think if you read Blake properly you're aware that he's not just critiquing institutions and people in very position high positions of power is critiquing everyone and he's going much further I think there are sort of straightforward sticking it to the man type attitude if we tapes Blake seriously then many of the assumptions that most of us live by need to be questioned the rules of regulations that we all follow often unconsciously need to be questioned and if we don't question them then in some sense I think for Blanke we're guilty we'll guilty of fitting in we're guilty of being in in a system that's controlling and oppressive and just to finish I think the key point about Blake is that he does have a faith in human Redemption you see this very strongly in Songs of Innocence and experience in the introduction to experience he talks of the voice of the bard and the capacity of that voice to fall and fall and light renew that idea of renewal or rebirth of somehow going beyond the corruption of fallenness of humanity to something better than that and I think for Blake that renewal comes ultimately from the innate good of children

Channel: The Faculties

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Keywords: The English Faculty, The Faculties, GCE English, GCE, revision, A-level, A-level revision, A-level English, English revision, study guide, study guides, English, Documentary, William Blake (Author), Poetry (Literary Genre), University, poetry, Songs Of Innocence And Experience (Book), Literary Criticism (Field Of Study)

Id: iVvC8Pfomhs

Length: 27min 18sec (1638 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 09 2015