"THE TYGER" by William Blake (1794)

"THE TYGER" by William Blake (1794)

1. Biography

   • born in London, 1757
   • drawing school, drawing teacher, engraver, illustrator
   • "Songs of Innocence" (1789): dramatizes naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of children; transformation as a child grows into adulthood; some written from the perspective of children; others are about children seen from an adult perspective; idyllic poems: positive, happy, optimistic, innocent, pastoral settings (countryside), praise these things as subjects, childhood & innocence
   • "Songs of Experience" (1793)
   • combined edition: "Songs of Innocence and Experience showing the two contrary states of the human soul" (1794): juxtaposes innocent/pastoral world of childhood against adult world of corruption/repression -> often railing against oppressive institutions like church, cultural traditions
     • "The Lamb": represent a meek virtue vs. "The Tyger": darker, opposing forces; real negative forces in the universe, which innocence fails to confront
       • the collection explores value/limitations of two different perspectives on the world: many poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation/problem is seen through the lens of innocence first and then experience
   • disapproved of the Enlightenment rationalism, institutionalized religion, tradition of marriage in its conventional legal/social form -> unorthodox religious thinking
   • poems were etched by hand, along with illustrations and decorative images -> limited circulation

2. Style

   • simple, direct
   • often narrative in style
   • frequent use of personifications
   • symbolism and biblical language

3. suspended between the neoclassicism of the 18th century and the early phases of Romanticism -> no single poetic school/age