The work addresses the representation of the child through selected works from Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
As a poet of unknown value during his lifetime, William Blake remains an exceptional writer of the early Romantics. Blake was not only exceptional for his devotion for an aesthetic form of his illuminated poems but he was also unique for his strong concentration of thought. In contrast to the Enlightenment thinkers, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau reconsidered the special stage of childhood. It was the great influence of Rousseau’s image of the child, not seen as a small adult but as a human being in its own entity and of natural innocence, which induced Blake to write his Songs of Innocence (1789) and its counterpart Songs of Experience (1794) a few years later.
As a poet of unknown value during his lifetime, William Blake (1757-1827) remains an exceptional writer of the early Romantics. Blake was not only exceptional for his devotion for an aesthetic form of his illuminated poems but he was also unique for his strong concentration of thought. In contrast to the Enlightenment thinkers, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau reconsidered the special stage of childhood. It was the great influence of Rousseau’s image of the child, not seen as a small adult but as a human being in its own entity and of natural innocence1 , which induced Blake to write his Songs of Innocence (1789) and its counterpart Songs of Experience (1794) a few years later. In the Songs, Blake firstly presents the innocent state of children, whereas later he gives a more experienced outlook as the result of destruction and suffering through society. Within his poetry, a child-like vision is traversed since a child loses its innocence in the course of time through experience. Nevertheless, Blake is not merely concerned with the loss of childhood as such but with something of deeper meaning2 .
The child will be Blake’s embodiment of the ‘divinity in man’3 , the ideal of humanity, resulting from its intrinsic values such as natural purity, moral kindness, sense of virtue, beauty and truth. For Blake, the child is not ruined by the innate sin resulting from the Fall as the Christian doctrine viewed it but it has an innate purity and is superior to the state of adulthood.4 Moreover, the fulfilment in God is the original quality of a child.5 Although religious from his nature, Blake’s view of God differs from the Christian doctrine: He appeals to the identification of man with God and believes in the divinity of human nature. By attributing his Illuminated Book of the Songs with the further description ‘Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’ it clearly depicts Blake’s concept of ideal mankind: Innocence and experience are incomplete as separate approaches but need to complement each other through creative imagination.6 Both contrary states are needed to result in ideal mankind. Above all, imagination is God, since he is ‘the creative and spiritual power in man’, therefore, ‘God is Man’.7 By concentrating on the image of the child in his Songs, Blake is able to form a contrast to adulthood and misery to depict the ideal human being. Moreover, imagination has great influence on children.
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1 Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina. "Images of Childhood in Romantic Children’s Literature" In: Bernard Dieterle/ Manfred Engel/ Gerald Gillespie (eds.): Romantic Prose Fiction. pp. 183-203. (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2008).
2 Bowra, C. M. “Songs of Innocence and Experience (1950)”, Palgrave advances in William Blake studies / edited by Nicholas M. Williams, p. 140.
3 Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina. "Images of Childhood in Romantic Children’s Literature"
4 University of Tennessee. “William Blake and the Child”, Romantic Politics. University of Tennessee, 2012. Web. <http://web.utk.edu/~gerard/romanticpolitics/index.html> 04. Jan. 2014.
5 Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina. "Images of Childhood in Romantic Children’s Literature"
6 Ibid.
7 Bowra, C. M. “ Songs of Innocence and Experience (1950)”, Palgrave advances in William Blake studies / edited by Nicholas M. Williams, p. 144.
- Citar trabajo
- Dorothée Bauer (Autor), 2014, The portrayal of the child in William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1174033
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