1. Garden of Love By William Blake ‘Songs of Experience’ 1794
Georgian period
Early Romantic poet

2. Historical context: Literary context
Blake was an early Romantic and reformist poet
He saw poetry as a tool for social commentary and change
Romanticism is…
A rebellious, anti-authoritarian spirit.
Freedom for the individual.
Importance of natural, spontaneous, intuitive response
Critical of religious dogma and social parameters that restrict human impulse
Songs of experience = tone of despair and about the corruption of love/ innocence
Historical context:
Time of immense social change
Industrial Revolution beginning
Challenge to traditional religious sensibilities
Social unrest
French Revolution : liberty, equality and fraternity (overthrow of the monarchy)
Blake opposed organised religion, was suspicious of the monarchy and railed against corruption of power.

3. Is there much love in this garden??
What about the title?
Garden of Love
Is there much love in this garden??
Poetic form: a lyric (first person & emotional content) and a lament (poem expressing grief for someone or something lost

4. ‘THOU SHALT NOT’ (LINE 6)
USE OF A MORAL IMPERATIVE
EIGHT OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT BEGIN WITH THIS
WHAT MOOD DOES THIS ESTABLISH?
WHAT KIND OF LOVE IS BEING FORBIDDEN? (AT AN EARLY POINT IN HISTORY SEX WAS ASSOCIATED WITH EVIL, VIRGINITY WITH GOODNESS)
IS CHURCH , IN BLAKE’S EYES, ABOUT WHAT YOU CAN OR CANNOT DO?
‘Celibacy is a gift from God’ Catholic code of canon law
The fall of mankind ……If Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived forever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings*.
Darwin’s Origin of the Species changed how we understand desire – as an animalistic, natural impulse. (1859)

5. How is the poem structured? A02/1
Stanzas One and Two
Garden of Love (a reference to…)
The green (symbolises…connotes…)
Sweet flowers (imagery ? Long vowels? Sibilant sounds?
The speaker reflects on how the green used to be ……
Contrast
Freedom versus
Control
Natural versus manmade
Gentle versus painful
Stanza Three
Graves (death imagery)
Tomb-stones (unnatural / man made / memorial / religious symbol)
Black gowns (colour imagery)
Briars (connotes…)
The speaker criticises the negative impact of the chapel on the green
PASTORAL SCENE IDYLLIC CHILDHOOD INNNOCENCE PLAY FERTILITY PRE-LAPSARIAN GARDEN (BEFORE THE FALL OF MANKIND) UNINHIBITED
CEMETERY POST-LAPSARIAN STATE (AFTER THE FALL) SHAME REPRESSION PROHIBITION IMPRISONMENT DEATH CONTROL EXPERIENCE JUDGEMENT

6. Is it a personal or political poem?
Is this poem typical of the love poetry we have read in the collection? A04
Is it a personal or political poem?
Does it have a specific or general audience?
Is it documenting love in an intimate or detached way?

7. I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst, 
Where I used to play on the green
Stanza one
Visits the garden from a perspective of innocence ‘never had seen’
Capitalised place name?
Chapel = symbol of organised religion / sin / law
(3) ‘in the midst’ –centralised position?
(4) Past tense ‘used to’
‘play’
‘green’

8. (1/2) ‘And’ anaphora
Shut (verb)
Gates (noun)
(2) Obedience and repression religious reference
(3) ‘turn’d’ (verb) how are the chapel and garden juxtaposed?
(4) Natural imagery
‘so’ (adverb)
long vowels
sibilant sounds
‘bore’ past tense
End- stopping in each line?
And the gates of this chapel were shut, 
And ‘Thou shalt not’ writ over the door; 
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, 
That so many sweet flowers bore.

9. And I saw it was filled with graves, 
And tomb-stones where flowers should be: 
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, 
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
‘And’ anaphora / repetition / listing
‘filled with’
‘graves’ symbolising..
(2) Juxtaposition ‘tomb-stones’ and ‘’flowers’
modal verb ‘should’
(3) ‘Priests’ symbol of …
‘black’ colour imagery / contrast
‘gowns’ connotes …
‘walking their rounds’ suggests
(4) verb ‘binding’
present participle ‘binding’
alliterative plosive consonants /b/
internal rhyme / assonance ‘binding’ ‘briars’ ‘desires’

10. Rhyme scheme regular in first two stanzas (2nd and 4th rhyming) abcb defe and then breaks down in the third stanza ghij
No end rhyme in stanza three showing the lack of harmony / death and decay of love
Tightening internal rhyme in stanza three imitating the constricting actions of the priests with their closed minds and dogmatic rules
RHYME

11. Anapestic trimester (stanzas one and two) weak/ weak/ strong
A rising meter like iambic which creates a conversational, natural rhythm
Until line 6 ‘Thou’ which moves into a heavy treble stress which conveys the severity of the prohibition
A missing syllable after ‘graves’ adds weight to the last word on the line
Last two lines tetrameter
METER

12. Practice question for your revision:
Examine the view that the church and love are in opposition in The Garden of Love