William Blake – Lesson 12 LQ: Can I analyse political allegory and develop my understanding of Blake’s poetry? Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet

LESSON 4: LQ: Can I understand the Spenserian Sonnet structure and use my understanding to analyse the presentation of love in two Sonnets by Spenser? Excellent progress: well-chosen quotations, literary devices analysed, effect on reader discussed, alternative interpretations considered and social context mentioned Outstanding progress: well-chosen quotations, sophisticated language used, literary devices analysed, effect on reader argued with perceptive points made, alternative interpretations revealed, developed consideration of social and historical context Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet William Blake – Lesson 12 LQ: Can I analyse political allegory?

What do you know about the 18 th century? Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions. Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet

Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet The French Revolution inspired London radicals and reformers to increase their demands for change. Others called for moderation and stability, while the government tried to suppress radical activity.. In Blake’s London, the condition of the poor and their children was beginning to receive more attention from social reformers. Improvements in hygiene and medical knowledge had led to increased life expectancy, but the rise in the population, poor harvests and war created serious hardships. Orphans and the illegitimate children of the poor could be sold into apprenticeships that offered meagre prospects; young boys were used to sweep chimneys (by scrambling up as ‘climbing-boys’); prostitution and dire housing conditions were continuing problems. Some philanthropic initiatives attempted to address these issues, but asylums and charity schools were often linked to the exploitative apprenticeship system

Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. "Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and the "Fall." Blake's categories are modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a state of protected innocence rather than original sin, but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience," a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes. The volume's "Contrary States" are sometimes signalled by patently repeated or contrasted titles: in Innocence, Infant Joy, in Experience, Infant Sorrow; in Innocence, The Lamb, in Experience, The Fly and The Tyger. The stark simplicity of poems such as The Chimney Sweeper and The Little Black Boy display Blake's acute sensibility to the realities of poverty and exploitation that accompanied the "Dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution.

Blake is especially famous for his Songs of Innocence and Experience Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet

Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet Look again at ‘The Garden of Love’. What do you notice about the rhyme pattern of stanza 3? Ext: What evidence can you find to support your ideas?

Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet Religious Interpretation Blake evokes the Garden of Eden before the Fall of humankind. When Adam and Eve were in the garden, they were able to love without shame and self- consciousness. It was a place, therefore, of innocent, uninhibited sexual expression. The state of the garden discovered by the speaker is therefore akin to Eden after the Fall, when sexuality is surrounded by shame, repression and prohibitions (see Big ideas from the Bible > Garden of Eden; Adam and Eve; Second Adam.) Since it thus became a poem interpreted in ways far removed from its original purpose, the Song serves as a metaphor for Blake's vision of the way in which the religious system has replaced a celebration of the goodness of sexuality with reasons for shame and repression. Prison – Blake's opposition to the repression of desires as advocated by conventional Christianity meant that the Chapel seems an image of prison (it is bounded by ‘gates' which are ‘shut‘, it is a place where people are not free to act (‘Thou shalt not'), it is associated with the loss of life (‘graves'), its priests wear uniforms (they are all ‘in black') and patrol the grounds like warders, they confine any initiative toward freedom (‘binding.. desires'), in a potentially painful way (using ‘briars‘))

Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet Look again at ‘The Ecchoing Green’. Come up with three ways in which you could compare this poem with the ‘The Garden of Love’. i.e. Green, structure, metre? Ext: Can you comment on the context surrounding Blake’s writing?

Write a paragraph: What comment is Blake making about love in ‘The Garden of Love’. Excellent progress: well-chosen quotations, literary devices analysed, effect on reader discussed, alternative interpretations considered and social context mentioned Outstanding progress: well-chosen quotations, sophisticated language used, literary devices analysed, effect on reader argued with perceptive points made, alternative interpretations revealed, developed consideration of social and historical context Love: platonic, courtly, unrequited, godly, familial Social Context: Renaissance, ballad, Tudors, Puritans, Humanism LIT TERMS: pentameter, free verse, alliteration, sexual language, Spenserian sonnet, rhyme scheme, couplet Ext: Can you quote from an additional poem that we have looked at?