Literature entry week 2
This week we looked a little at Blake. I've always loved Blake, having first studied him during high school. I particularly like how Blake, in Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience, there are two different perspectives of the same issue, or topic.
In "The Nurse", the poems are about young children through the perspective of a third party, the nurse. Songs of Innocence poems all follow a pattern; focusing on the innocence, joy and wonder of childhood, as demonstrated through the "green" imagery prevalent throughout the poem. There is a heavy focus on the natural environment and how that reflects the child. Light, carefree, all-knowledgeable and wise in their own special way. Blake compares the child to the natural environment, presenting them as "uncorrupted", "unadulterated" by the "real, grown-up" world. This is shown throug th perspective of the child, young, innocent, untarnished by the realities of life. Blake believes that the child in all its unadulterated nature ppossesses all the wisdom and knowledge that the adult desires. The child is everything the adult yearns to be, but cannot go back to.
In Songs of Experience, the perspective is changed to a more worldly, mature, and cynical view of the world. It is the perspective of the bitter adult, ridden with regret. Hardened by past experiences, the adult is seen as a cynical being which yearns for order and semblance in their world. They desire to be wise and knowledgeable and see things in a negative light. The adult desires meaning, but sees the means in attaining that complicated. The adult sees the child as ignorant, and thus reinforces the "children should be seen and not heard" mentality. Unlike the adult, the child is uncorrupted by experience (in particular "bad" experiences) and education. An adult sees the importance and meaning of things in knowledge, over analysing rather than just appreciating the environment for what it is, and for children as the knowledgeable beings they are.