Skip to main content

How does William Blake show his ideas in his poems?

William Blake's poetry spans a wide variety of ideas and themes, so it's hard to say objectively how he shows all of these (doing so would require many volumes of print). I can, however, describe generally how Blake constructs the central idea in his poetry of The Songs of Innocence and Experience


In these poems, Blake explores the differences between how one perceives the world in a youthful state (innocence) and how one perceives the world in a state of maturity (experience). He primarily does so by offering contrasting poems that deal with the same subject, albeit with differing perspectives. For instance, Blake wrote two poems titled "The Chimney Sweeper." Both describe chimney sweepers, but one views the occupation from a youthful, idealistic viewpoint, while the other views it from a more cynical perspective that takes into account the oppressive forces that drive children to such an occupation. By exploring the world around him with such contrasting perspectives, Blake masterfully illustrates the differences between youth and maturity.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.