Reading and Writing Skills for Students of Literature in English: Romanticism Enric Monforte Jacqueline Hurtley Bill Phillips William Blake 1757-1827 http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/personen/fleischmann/ d_archsuse05/299_ept_gesamt.htm
William Blake 1757-1827 The second of five children; his father was a hosier. He grew up in London and had visionary experiences. He saw angels in a tree at Peckham Rye and the
prophet Ezekiel in a field. http://www.wga.hu/html/r/ raphael/5roma/5/08ezekie.html Raffaello The Vision of Ezekiel 1518 http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/lili/personen/ fleischmann/
d_archsuse05/299_ept_gesamt.htm 1772 apprenticed to an engraver. 1779 Royal Academy as an engraving student. Strongly disliked Sir Joshua Reynolds, its president. Sir Joshua Reynolds 1723-1792 http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/ ~pcraddoc/reynolds.jpg
Lady Elizabeth Delm and her Children 1777-80 http://www.wga.hu/html/r/reynolds/delme.html In 1782, Blake married Catherine Boucher. Blakes marriage to the beautiful Catherine Boucher, daughter of a London market gardener, with whom he sunbathed naked in his garden at Lambeth, was
childless but intensely happy. Holmes, Richard. The Romantic Poets and their Circle. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 1997. p.17 Blakes radical dissenting background 17th century: many protestant sects opposed to the Anglican Church. In general they were: millenarians, antinomian. Blake disliked the Old Testament, its angry God keeping humanity in ignorance. He liked the New Testament with Jesus a liberator of
humanity from all restrictions. http://www.art4net.com/EXPObl.html Blake was an antinomian: The antinomians rejected obedience as legalistic; the good life flowed from the inner working of the Holy Spirit. They are often anarchistic. Blakes political radicalism
Anti-authoritarian. Religion and politics cannot be separated. Defended the poor and the marginalised. London http://www.english.upenn.edu/ Projects/knarf/Gifs/blondon.html http://www.rslade.co.uk/
What do you know about London? Is the poem a celebration or a critique of the city? Match the words on the left from stanza 1 with the appropriate word(s) on the right wander pain charterd
sign flow walk mark mapped
woe moving water wander walk charterd mapped
flow moving water mark sign woe
pain Explain the following from stanza 2: ban mind-forgd manacles http://www.culworthforge.co.uk/images/ martin_forge1.jpg http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/
moravia4.html Stanza 3: What is this mans job? Chimney sweeper Could a small child do this job? http://www.virtual-knutsford.co.uk/ frameset.php?main=/ask_joan/irlam.htm
blackning: what does the term black suggest to you? Why is the Church blackning? http://www.search.com/reference/ Atlantic_slave_trade
What about the use of appalls? What is happening to the soldier? What does hapless mean? http://alankhenderson.blogspot.com/ 2003_10_01_archive.html What do the chimney sweep and the soldier
have in common? What do the Church and the Palace have in common? www.hberlioz.com/London/BLWestminster.html http://www.bcsu.net/Media/images/20243_81356_original.jpg Stanza 4 Find words related to death and disease curse, blasts, blights, plagues, hearse Find words related to human relationships
harlot, infant, marriage http://www.ogerstung.de/ lichtenberg/hogarth/ 1732.HarlotsProgress.2.b.jpg Francois Boucher Virgin and Child 1770 http://
www.classicartrepro.com/ artistsc.iml?painting=3050 A Harlots Progress 1732 William Hogarth What are the social and political institutions Blake attacks in the poem? How far does the poem go in its criticism of late 18th century society?
Do you agree that the following are alluded to in London? The French Revolution The British Empire The Enlightenment The Industrial Revolution A closer look at the term charterd I wander thro each charterd street Near where the charterd thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe Magna Carta 1215 http://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Image:Magna_Carta.jpg An earlier version of the poem Why should I care for the men of thames Or the cheating waves of charterd streams
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear That the hireling blows into my ear Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames Tho his waters bathed my infant limbs I spurnd his waters away from me I was born a slave but I long to be free Charterd associated with cheating: Chartered companies represent privilege. In 1793 the
Honourable East India Company was forced to accept a government review of its practices in India. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/8/87/India1760_1905.jpg The Thames dockyard, especially the
HEICs, was corrupt. Dockyard corruption seriously damaged the efficiency of the navy during the French wars just beginning (early 1793).
http://www.portcities.org.uk/london/server/show/conMediaFile.567/The-WestIndia-Docks-by-Rowlandson-and-Pugin.html The West India Docks in 1810, by Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Charles Pugin (notice the enormous wharehouses in the background) Government agents (hirelings) informed on anti-government
movements. Blake sympathised with the French Revolution and its supporters. www.answers.com/ topic/sans-culottes sans-culotte Louis-Lopold Boilly (1761-1845)
1790 and 1794 Habeas Corpus Suspension Acts led to the imprisonment without trial of hundreds of people. http:// www.geraldmassey.org. uk/bezer/ b_regina_v_ bezer.htm London's notorious Newgate Prison, on the left, looking towards Old Bailey.
Thomas Paine 1737-1809 1774 emigrated to Philadelphia 1787 Returned to England. 1791-2 Published Rights of Man 1.5 million sold in England. Forced to flee to France, became a deputy in the French National Convention. Disillusioned by situation in
France, returned to US in 1802. http://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/Instructional/Resources/ ConstitutionDay/FoundersGallery/index.htm It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect - that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of
a few...The only persons on whom they operate are the persons whom they exclude...Therefore, all charters have no other than an indirect negative operation. Thomas Paine The Rights of Man A closer look at the term mark I wander thro each charterd street Near where the charterd thames does flow And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe
Genesis 4:15 And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. Cain killing Abel http://www.answers.com/topic/cain-and-abel Revelation 13:16 And
he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
http://www.bookofrevelation.net/ch13-monster%20&%20beast %20with%20lamb%20horns_small.jpg I see London blind & age-bent begging thro the Streets Of Babylon, led by a child, his tears run down his beard Jerusalem http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Gifs/blondon.html Revelation 17:5 And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE
GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH 17:18 And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. The Whore of Babylon But most thro midnight streets I hear
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ pages/frontline/shows/ apocalypse/explanation/ brevelation.html How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the newborn Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse Babylon is associated with the corrupt state, corrupt
institutions, worldly power and authority, an idea common to the sects of the 17th-18th centuries (and Rastafarianism). Blake associates the state with Babylon and slavery Second stanza: In every voice; in ever ban The german-forgd links I hear. German-forgd links? The house of Hanover ruled Britain from 17141901. People feared that Hanoverian troops would be brought in to suppress English radicals.
George III 1760-1820 http:// www.royalinsight.g ov.uk/output/ Page2944.asp mind forgd suggests self-imposed restrictions. [I]t is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work ... The efficiency of power, its
constraining force have, in a sense, passed over to the other side - to the side of its surface of application. He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principal of his own subjection. Foucault, Michel. Panopticism Discipline and Punish 1975
If he believes in Justice, he will submit unconditionally to the rules of the Law, and may even protest when they are violated, sign petitions, take part in a demonstration etc... the ideological representation of ideology is itself forced to recognise that every subject endowed with a consciousness and believing in the ideas that his consciousness inspires in him and freely accepts, must act according to his desires, must therefore inscribe his own ideas as a free subject in the actions
of his material practice. If he does not do so, that is wicked. Louis Althusser Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses 1977 From Proverbs of Heaven and Hell: Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
