Blake Context

Blake Context

1. Blake's Life

   • In 1803, he was threatened with arrest - he asked a soldier in his garden to leave, when he did not, he forcefully moved him on, shouting words against King and Country and calling for the French to invade
   • His mother was a member of the Moravian Church - they believed children should be educated at home, valued powerful emotions, laid stress on visual art and believed that children could see visions
   • Blake's father was a religious nonconformist - these were religious groups who had separated from the church in the 17th and 18th centuries, Blake didn't attend church himself, but did have religious belief
   • His only formal education was a 7 year engraving apprenticeship and his first engraving commission was with Joseph Johnson, who published many radical individuals, the feminist Mary Woolstonecraft, anarchist William Godwin and republican Tom Paine
   • He married a woman named Catherine Boucher, she was illiterate and of a lower class than him, his parents did not approve of the marriage, from this moment, Blake stopped heavy involvement with his family

2. Jean Jacques Rousseau

   • His ideas showed an interest in the self, the passion of love, the state of man in society and the admiration of nature
   • Philosopher and writer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought.
   • 'Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains' - a condemnation of a controlling, tyrannical government.
   • 'Child should develop at its own pace, and not be forced to act as an adult'

3. Holy Thursday

   • 1704-1877 - annual services were held on Ascension Day in London for patrons of charity schools
   • poor and destitute children would sing the praises of their benefactors
   • From 1782, the services were moved to St Paul's Cathedral because there were so many poor children going to charity schools, as many as 6000

4. Chimney Sweepers

   • The usual age that children became chimney sweeps, was around 6 or 7, but children as young as 4 or 5, would also be employed
     • They were kept worse than animals, not clothed, fed, or washed by their masters
     • Soot never being washed from their bodies caused a cancer of the scrotum and the children were in constant fear of burning or suffocating.
   • On the first of May each year, a holiday was granted to the chimney sweepers, their sooty faces were whitened with meal, reddened and clothes were covered in lace. They wore pieces of foil and coloured ribbons.
     • It was called a 'calling in the streets'
   • Their masters would often turn them out on the streets to 'cry in the streets' to earn their masters money
   • There were often sexual connotations connected to the chimney sweepers, as they could be employed to kiss a bride at a wedding and were easy prey for those who lusted after them

5. Blake and the concept of contraries

   • groups and individuals gain power by establishing hierarchies - the rulers are placed at the top
   • hierarchies are maintained by rigid value systems (x is permissable, good and moral, y is bad, immoral and sometimes illegal)
   • Blake challenges this adherence to binary oppositions in favour of dialectic, individuals should resist subscribing exclusively to one value, such rigidity puts people at the mercy of tyrants, religious conservatives and those who would stifle free speech
   • to achieve dialectic, Blake promoted contraries, embracing contraries meant refusing to blindly conform to the reductive values we are encouraged or coerced to abide by
   • it meant being more receptive to unconvential anti-establishment ideas - more aware and more appreciative, too, of those marginalised in society, a rejection of fixed labels, rigid thinking and the status quo