Willaim Blake

1
Willaim Blake

• Tyger
• The Sick Rose

2
Outline

• William Blake
• The Sick Rose
• Tyger (a companion of the innocent The Lamb).

3
William Blake

• an English writer, poet, and illustrator of the
  Romantic period
• Had visions of angels as a child
• 1787 ? the technique of "illuminated writing," or
  relief-etching.
• Songs of Innocence (1789)
• 1797 Songs of Innocence and of Experience ("the
  two Contrary States of the Human Soul." )

• Image source http//members.aol.com/lshauser2/wmb
  lake.html

4
Songs of Innocence and of Experience

• Both innocence and experience are necessary
  states in the development of the human spirit. We
  are all born innocents, but when we begin to
  recognize evil or wrong, and are inevitably
  tempted by it, we pass into a state of
  experience.
• Higher Innocence with childlike trust and
  vision.
• See clips

5
The Sick Rose

• 1. What tone(s) can you find in this poem?
• 2. Are there images which are ironic?
• 3. And sound effects?

6
The Sick Rose

• O rose, thou art sick!
• The invisible worm
• That flies in the night,
• In the howling storm,
• Has found out thy bed
• Of crimson joy,
• And his dark secret love
• Does thy life destroy.
• (spondee? dactyl? Trochee?)

7
THE TYGER

1.  What sound effects do you find in this poem?
2. Why are there so many unanswered questions?
3. What parts of the tiger the focuses of the
   speakers attention? 

8
THE TYGER

•  Tiger, tiger, burning bright
• In the forests of the night,
• What immortal hand or eye
• Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
• In what distant deeps or skies
• Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
• On what wings dare he aspire?
• What the hand dare seize the fire?
• And what shoulder and what art
• Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
• And, when thy heart began to beat,
• What dread hand and what dread feet?  

9
THE TYGER (2)

• What the hammer?  what the chain? In what
  furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what
  dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors
  clasp? When the stars threw down their
  spears, And watered heaven with their
  tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who
  made the lamb make thee?  Tyger, tyger, burning
  bright In the forests of the night, What
  immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful
  symmetry?

10
Allusions

• Daedelus and Icarus (line 7),
• the daring Greek god Prometheus (line 8),
• Vulcan the blacksmith (lines 9-10 and 13-14),
• Lucifer and his angels (lines 17-18)
• the God of the Old Testament.
• ? Blake himself?

11
Film Clips 19th Century Poetry

• Tennyson ? female writers
• Romantic poets