CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
Overview:
In 1789, William Blake published his Songs of Innocence, a collection of poems about and for
children. In 1794, he added Songs of Experience, a set of contrasting poems, many of them
deliberately paired (and identically titled) with a poem from Innocence. He titled the complete
collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the two contrary States of the Human Soul
(1794). Blake’s foundation for both Innocence and Experience is biblical: Paradise before the fall;
and the subsequent state of human sin after the fall. Blake also strongly associates Innocence with
untainted childhood and Experience with the adult world of social evils and forms of oppression,
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
which he witnessed in late 18th-century London, and which the French Revolution in 1789 had
illuminated. Blake’s collection poses a number of important questions: Is the state of Innocence or
Experience superior? If so, which? Alternatively, are both states integral to the human condition:
that is, does each state offer what the other lacks?
Objectives:
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To examine the Christian aspects of William Blake’s Songs: in subject, imagery, theme, form,
diction, and figurative language
To consider the unconventional nature of this relationship to Christianity: he embraced its
spiritual elements and ideas, but rejected the Church as an organized institution
To define Blake’s concepts of Innocence and Experience, and to discuss the relationship, in
his poems, between these “two contrary states of the human soul”
To identify the importance of the child for Blake, in Christian and poetic terms
To examine Blake’s illuminated prints (etched and hand-painted) for his poems and to
consider the relationship between the visual and written versions of each work
Readings:
Selections from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/
Innocence poems (1789)
“Introduction”
“The Lamb”
“The Echoing Green”
“Nurses Song”
“The Chimney Sweeper”
“Holy Thursday”
Experience poems (1794)
“The Tyger”
“Nurses Song”
“The Chimney Sweeper”
“Holy Thursday”
“The Sick Rose”
“London”
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
8.1.1. Intellectual Context
During the 18th century, the Age of the Enlightenment,
emphasis was placed on the power of human reason: the idea,
articulated by John Locke, that all things are knowable through
rational understanding and sensory perception of the world, and
that only concrete things exist. It was an era in human history
propelled by the imperative to systemize and codify knowledge
(the birth of the encyclopedia), nature, society, and the human
mind. Indeed, the word enlightenment connotes emergence from
the darkness of earlier periods in human history: the desire, now,
to subject all ideas to reasoned scrutiny and to remove elements
deemed miraculous, mysterious, and irrational.
Blake, however, rebelled radically against this, marking a
turn in late 18th-century thought away from the dominance of
objective reason and towards the acceptance of feeling,
subjectivity, and spirituality. Significantly, Blake’s intellectual
William Blake
break with his predecessors coincided with the French
Thomas Phillips (1807)
Revolution, which broke, too, with historical precedent in calling
National Portrait Gallery, London
for a new republican (rather than a monarchy) system of
government by the people. Blake advocated processes other than reason to explain how the mind
works and how we experience and know about the world: through imagination (including dreams,
visions, memory, and intuition); through an active, dynamic mind that is free to transform, rather
than just record, reality, and to create mental images not present to the senses; and through
spirituality—that is, faith in a mysterious, transcendent reality.
Blake was a very spiritual person. He knew the Bible intimately. As well, he had very
personal experiences of a spiritual realm: he claims to have been visited by angels, to have seen the
soul of his dying brother ascend and to have communed with his brother after death, and to have
experienced God’s presence directly. In these respects, Blake’s spirituality was mystical. Further,
he believed strongly that human happiness is derived from heightened communion with a heavenly
world, for it enables salvation for the individual and for society: the capacity to imagine the world
other than it is and to then reform it, to imagine and share in another’s joy, and to empathize with
others’ suffering. Lack of imagination leads to indifference, cruelty, human sacrifice, and a mind
dominated by reason.
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
8.1.2. Literary Analysis and Study Questions
We will read the poems in pairs, which Blake intended: they present identical subjects that reflect
differences in the states of Innocence and Experience. Blake’s foundation for Innocence is the
biblical state before the fall; he adds to that (Romantic) notions of childhood spontaneity, freedom,
happiness, contentment with the world, charity to others, and living in community. In contrast,
Experience represents the biblical fallen world; Blake folds into that concept his keen interest in the
immediate social ills and forms of oppression in the late 18th century, which the momentum of the
French Revolution had illuminated. The human figures in these poems, in contrast to those still
living in Innocence, are enslaved to labour, skeptical, critical, and even angry; they are not at peace
with the world, existing often as lonely wanderers in an indifferent environment. Blake’s collection
poses a number of important questions: Is one state superior to the other? Are both states integral
to the human condition; does each state lack what the other offers? What is the role of Christianity
in either state?
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
8.1.3. Songs of Innocence (1789)
We will begin by reading the selected Innocence poems.
Our task is to define what constitutes Innocence, as Blake
conceived it. For each work, we can ask the same question:
What makes it a poem of Innocence?
We can think, for example, about Blake’s (and the Romantic
period’s) conception of childhood as a time of joy,
imaginative freedom, playfulness, spontaneity, lack of fear,
contentment with the world as a secure place, living in
community with others, wonder, novelty, charity, and
spiritual faith.
These poems reflect the admirable
simplicity of the child’s world. The collection is a book for
children and adults, which not only celebrates the child’s
world but also addresses the matter of an ideal upbringing.
The poems, in their simplicity of diction, rhythm, and
rhyme, incorporate elements of both Sunday school hymns
and nursery rhymes.
Also, expressing Innocence is Blake’s use of Scripture and
biblical images. Innocence is the pre-lapsarian state of
humanity before the fall: the Garden of Eden. Blake extends
that period, proclaiming it as a state of childhood into Blake’s Title Page for Songs of Innocence
which we are all born. Think about his conception of
children as lambs, who exemplify Christ-like meekness, tenderness, purity; as lambs, they also need
protective adult figures, or shepherds: the nurses, parents, grandparents, and the whole social
community who nurture the young and nostalgically remember their own joyful experience as
children.
Also expressive of Innocence is Blake’s distinctive use of imagery (in both his poems and his
illuminated prints). Notice the prominence of nature, daylight, water, blossoming flowers,
protective trees, musical sounds (and echoes), children’s games, circles and enclosures, bright
colours, whiteness, nurturing adults, and guardian angels. Blake claimed that “all that lives is holy.”
As you read the poems, think more fully about how Blake represents Innocence and why he
celebrates it. What ideas can you add?
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
8.1.4. Songs of Experience
This portion was never published separately, which suggests that Blake intended the two sets to be
read together. Consider the relationship between Innocence and Experience, particularly in the
explicit paring of poems from each set. How do they differ? Do they oppose each other? Or, is
Blake suggesting that one state needs (and corrects) the other? Clearly, Blake added Experience to
offer a more comprehensive vision of human life.
Our task, now, is to define what constitutes
Experience, as Blake conceived it. For each
work, we can ask the same question: What
makes it a poem of Experience?
While Innocence is a protected state in which
we wish to stay as long as possible—an
unconscious time of divine protection, mercy,
joy, and repose—we can’t stay. As the mind
develops, it grows into greater consciousness.
To live in the adult world is to distrust and
suppress imagination; as well, it is a time when
the initial bliss has been destroyed (Adam
becomes aware of death).
Notice the differences in these poems. The
speakers are more politicized, angry, and
disillusioned. They witness actualities in the
world: evils, tyranny, oppression, economic
exploitation, industries, work houses, moral
corruptness, weariness in life, sorrow, death,
and the hardening of compassion into stony
righteousness. As well, the imagery is much
different. Look for instances of darkness,
bondage, children abandoned or lost, adults
Advertising Bill for London Chimney Sweepers (1790s)
who are indifferent to their child, and
neglectful institutions. The human figures in
these poems, in contrast to those in Innocence, are skeptical, accusatory, in conflict with the world,
selfish, and existing as lonely wanderers in an indifferent world.
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
Lambeth, on the edge of London, where Blake lived
Enslavement is a central theme of the Experience poems.
Blake felt that society was enslaved by external forces:
mechanized society (factories, child labour, workers as
tools in the industrial machine), by overbearing
institutions (Law, Church, State), by materialistic profitdriven motives, and by the dominance of reason,
rationality, and science. However, Blake went further and
identified self-imposed slavery: “Mind-forged manacles,”
in which the mind enslaves itself in chains of its own
making: such as adherence to conventional morals,
limited perceptions, materialism, the world of the senses,
dogma, legalism, or setting oneself above others.
As you read the poems, think more fully about how Blake
represents Experience and why he adds it. Is social
criticism a necessary perspective in the world, which
Innocence lacks? What ideas can you contribute?
Urizen in Chains
The image to the right is Blake’s definitive visual statement that those with the most material
power are also the most enslaved. Urizen (your reason) is manacled by his limited perceptions.
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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CATH 330.66 – Catholicism and the Arts
Module Eight – The Romantic Period (1700-1832)
Blake developed his own mythology to explain the creation of the world. He conceived of this
tyrannical figure as its creator, a figure who embodies not only reason, but also materialism and
legalism, and the narrow perceptions that both entail.
8.1.5. Question for Blackboard Discussion
Go to The William Blake Archive. Click “enter the archive” and
then “works in the collection.” Select The Songs of Innocence and of
Experience. Notice only 11 manuscripts are listed, which shows
how few copies Blake made by hand, and their relative rarity in
public libraries and museums today. Explore these different
manuscripts. (Note that, once you select a poem, you can hit
“compare” and view all the subsequent illuminated versions that
Blake made in that series.)
1. Choose one “pair” of poems (from our reading list)
from an illuminated manuscript of your choice: one
poem from Innocence and one from Experience.
2. Compare the two visually: how do they differ?
3. Compare the two visual images to the poems: are they different or similar? Is one media
superior to the other in conveying Innocence and Experience?
4. Use only this website as your source: http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/
Lesson 8.1 – Innocence and Experience: William Blake
©Continuing & Distance Education, St. Francis Xavier University - 2012
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