19 pages • 38 minutes read
William BlakeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
William Blake is associated with the Romantic period of English literature. Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in late-18th and early-19th century Europe that challenged the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason, science, and logic, favoring instead intense emotion, subjective experience, the innocence of childhood, the sublimity of nature, and the rejection of bourgeois values. Blake himself exemplifies many of the characteristics of this literary movement, as he was an iconoclastic figure who rejected the conventional religious and political views of his time while crafting poems and paintings that challenged 18th century’s critical standards.
His poem “The Lamb” fits into this framework of Romanticism while not quite conforming to the period’s typical artistic tenets. The poem partakes in Romanticism’s celebration of passion and feeling over rationality, as shown by the speaker’s childish enthusiasm and associative—as opposed to logical—thinking. The poem also finds beauty in nature, using the bucolic setting to represent an escape from the corruption of industrialized society. Nevertheless, Blake’s poem has a nearly naive sensibility that distinguishes it from more conventional Romantic poems.
Although Blake is now considered one of the preeminent figures of the Romantic period in England, he was relatively obscure in his lifetime. Not only did his unorthodox religious and political views set him apart from his contemporaries, but his celebration of the artist’s imagination over reason and objective reality made him an avant-garde figure in his day. He eschewed realism in favor of fantastical, dreamlike visions and made prophetic declarations about the soul of humanity. His contemporary Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who likewise wrote fantastical poems, including “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan,” considered Blake a “man of Genius.” However, other notable poets of the day, including William Wordsworth, believed Blake had a mental health condition.
William Blake’s complex religious identity made him a subversive figure in his time. Like most English readers of the 18th century, Blake grew up reading the Bible and was heavily influenced by its stories, imagery, and teachings. However, Blake was raised in the tradition of English Dissent, a sect of Protestant Christians that separated from the Church of England. Blake himself came to reject orthodox Christianity, which he viewed as repressive and authoritarian, but he nonetheless used biblical imagery and forms in crafting his own mythology and moral philosophy. Blake sought to free himself from the limitations of religious orthodoxy through his visionary view of the world.
From a young age, Blake claimed that he saw heavenly visions, or hallucinations, including angels, ghosts, and other supernatural figures. For example, he maintained that the spirit of his deceased brother Robert visited him in a dream and taught him the technique of illuminated printing, which he used to illustrate many of his writings, including the Songs of Innocence. These visions place Blake in a long tradition of Christian mystics, dating back to Hildegard von Bingen and Julian of Norwich. Using his visions as a source of artistic inspiration, Blake sought a revolution in imagination and the spiritual renewal of humanity.
By William Blake