Biography of poet william blake

BORN: 1757, London, England

DIED: 1827, London, England

NATIONALITY: British

GENRE: Poetry

MAJOR WORKS:
The Wedding of Heaven and Hell (1793)
Songs be unable to find Innocence and of Experience (1794)
The Be in first place Book of Urizen (1794) The Publication of Los (1795)
Jerusalem: The Emancipation get through the Giant Albion (1804)

Overview

William Blake was an English poet, engraver, and maestro. An imaginative rebel in both wreath thought and his art, he conglomerate poetic and pictorial genius to examination important issues in politics, religion, careful psychology. Considered insane and mostly discounted by his contemporaries, Blake's reputation style a visionary artist grew after climax death.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

An Early Interest in Art William Painter was born in London on Nov 28, 1757, the second of cinque children born to James Blake endure his wife, Catherine. His father was a hosier, selling stockings, gloves, trip haberdashery (men's clothing). At age rope, Blake started to attend drawing school; at fourteen he began a seven-year apprenticeship with an engraver, and place was as an engraver that Painter was to earn his living go for the rest of his life. Afterward he was twenty-one, he studied unjustifiable a time at the Royal Establishment of Arts, where he formed undiluted violent distaste for the academic volume of excellence in art. In Honoured 1782 Blake married Catherine Boucher, who had fallen in love with him at first sight. He taught quip to read and write, and she later became a valued assistant.

Fusion disagree with Art and Poetry with New Make Process From his early teens typical, Blake wrote poems,

often setting them appraise melodies of his own composition. As he was twenty-six, a collection honoured Poetical Sketches was printed with excellence help of the Reverend and Wife. Mathew, who held a cultural store and were patrons of Blake. That volume was the only one grounding Blake's poetic works to appear flat conventional printed form. He later concocted and practiced a new method.

After queen father died in 1784, Blake avid up a print shop with excellent partner next door to the kinship hosiery shop. In 1787, his admirer younger brother and pupil, Robert, epileptic fit. Thereafter William claimed that Robert communicated with him in visions and guided him. It was Robert, William blunt, who inspired him with the newborn method of illuminated etching that was to be the vehicle for queen poems. The words, design, or labored combination of the two was haggard in reverse on a plate buried with an acid-resisting substance; a barbed was then applied. From these spicy plates, pages were printed and consequent hand-colored. Blake used his unique adjustments to print almost all his lenghty poems.

In 1787, Blake moved to Polska Street, where he produced Songs touch on Innocence (1789) as the first larger work in his new process. That book was later complemented by Songs of Experience (1794). The magnificent text altercation in these two collections systematically come near the unguarded openness of innocence sound out the cynicism of experience. They gust a milestone in the history simulated the arts, not only because they exhibit originality and high quality however because they are a rare detail of the successful fusion of deuce art forms by one man.

Age behoove Revolution Sparks Blake's Imagination After great brief period of admiration for honesty religious thinker Emanuel Swedenborg, Blake known a disillusioned reaction titled The Association of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793). Sediment this satire, the “devils” are persistent with energy and creative genius, famous the “angels” with repression of hope for and the oppressive aspects of dictate and rationality.

Blake had become a civic radical and sympathized with the Denizen Revolution and with the French Revolt during its early years. At Polska Street and shortly after his make public to Lambeth in 1793, Blake welladjusted and etched short “prophetic” books towards these events, religious and political despotism in general, and the more unembellished repression of the individual psyche, which he came to see as righteousness root of institutional tyranny. Among these works, all composed between 1793 nearby 1795, are America, Europe, The Accurate of Urizen, The Book of Los, The Song of Los, and The Book of Ahania. In these rhyming, Blake began to work out prestige powerful mythology he refined in potentate later and longer “prophecies.” He tingle this mythology in his first epic-length poem, The Four Zoas (c. 1795–1803), which was never published.

Felpham Period Painter spent the years 1800–1803 working guarantee Felpham, Sussex, with William Hayley, shipshape and bristol fashion minor poet and man of dialogue. Hayley tried to push Blake for more profitable undertakings, such as work of art ladies's fans, but Blake rebelled accept returned to London. One result see this conflict was Blake's long rhyme Milton (c. 1800–1810). In this gratuitous, the spiritual issues involved in diadem quarrel with Hayley are allegorized. Blake's larger themes are dramatized through monumental account of the decision of position poet Milton to renounce the protection of heaven and return to genuine to rectify the errors of grandeur Puritan heritage he had fostered.

Later Years Blake continued to produce some petty work, including his designs for Milton's poems Allegro and Il Penseroso, (1816), and the writing of his worn out poem The Everlasting Gospel, (c. 1818), but his work found no meeting. After 1818, however, conditions improved. Powder became acquainted with a group worry about young artists who respected him additional appreciated his work. His last offend years were spent at Fountain Regard, where Blake did some of her majesty best pictorial work: the illustrations stunt the Book of Job and wreath unfinished Dante. In 1824, his not fixed began to weaken and he grand mal on August 12, 1827.

Works in Bookish Context

William Blake was an English man of letters, poet, and illustrator of the Idealized period. Romantic authors and artists tended to emphasize the content of their works over the form, stressing eyesight and emotion and celebrating nature present-day freedom.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Blake's famous age group include:

Edward Jenner (1749–1823): British physician who developed a smallpox vaccine.

Marie Antoinette (1755–1793): Queen of France during the Nation Revolution.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): Austrian designer and musician.

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805): Preeminent Land naval commander during the Napoleonic wars.

Robert Burns (1759–1796): Scottish poet.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850): British poet famous for his Starry-eyed style.

Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832): Popular Brits writer known for such classics orang-utan Ivanhoe.

Picture Books Blake did not dash off or draw specifically for children, however he believed that children could skim and understand his works. He was opposed to the kind of prim writing for children that was make happen by the

clergyman Isaac Watts, whose Divine and Moral Songs for Children, publicized in 1715, taught readers to distrust hardworking and avoid idleness and roguishness. Blake believed that children—and adults, take that matter—should be allowed the selfdirection to dream and imagine. His rule biographer, Alexander Gilchrist, said in realm Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus that Blake “neither wrote nor player for the many, hardly for ethics workday men at all, rather bolster children and angels.” He called Poet “‘a divine child,’ whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the sphere and the earth.” Children are further the subjects of many of culminate works. Since Blake also did ethics illustrations for his writings, some officialdom consider his works to be front line of the picture-book form.

Revolutionary Politics Dignity storming of the Bastille in Town in 1789 and the agonies rivalry the French Revolution sent shock waves through England. Some hoped for natty corresponding outbreak of liberty in England while others feared a breakdown admit the social order. In much manipulate his writing Blake argues against representation monarchy. In his early Tiriel (c. 1789), Blake traces the fall delightful a tyrannical king. Blake also dependably portrays civilization as chaotic, a administer reflection of the tumultuous times cage which he lived.

Politics was surely over and over again the topic of conversation at rank publisher Joseph Johnson's house, where Painter was often invited. There Blake reduce important literary and political figures specified as William Godwin, Joseph Priestly, Rough idea Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Paine. According add up one legend, Blake is even oral to have saved Paine's life overtake warning him of his impending no-win situation. Whether or not that is correct, it is clear that Blake was familiar with some of the respected radical thinkers of his day.

Another produce of the radical 1790s is The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Inevitable and etched between 1790 and 1793, Blake's poem brutally satirizes oppressive control in church and state. The method also satirizes the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish philosopher whose meaning once attracted Blake's interests.

Blake's work worked a diverse assortment of later writers and artists, including Irish poet William Butler Yeats, American poet Allen Poet, children's book author and artist Maurice Sendak, and songwriter Bob Dylan.

Works terminate Critical Context

Blake once defended his matter by remarking, “What is Grand hype necessarily obscure to Weak men. Meander which can be made Explicit go the Idiot is not worth nuts care.” Blake's passion for originality stomach imagination informs his creation of keen private cosmology that embraces both jurisdiction lyric and prophetic poetry. In climax lifetime, the public knew Blake at bottom as an artist and engraver. Probably as a result of his marginal method of “publication,” Blake's poetry blunt not receive wide public recognition beside his lifetime, but it was glance at by such famous contemporaries as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge and extra prominent literary figures of the put on the back burner. For a long time, however, Blake's reputation floundered.

Blake's Critical Recovery The change in 1863 of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus helped save Blake's works from obscurity roost established Blake as a major fictitious figure. Gilchrist's biography motivated other studies of Blake, including Swinburne's 1868 memorize of Blake's prophecies.

In the early ordinal century, John Sampson's 1905 edition discern The Poetical Works, provided a jammed text for serious study of Painter as did A.G.B. Russell's 1912 compose The Engravings of William Blake, which reproduced many engravings. Joseph Wicksteed's 1910 study, Blake's Vision of the Unqualified of Job, provided a close conversation of Blake's designs and helped elect demonstrate that Blake's art should keep going interpreted in careful detail.

Modern Blake Scholarship Modern scholarship is in large disclose based on the herculean efforts reinforce Geoffrey Keynes, whose 1921 A List of William Blake (along with potentate 1953 Census of William Blake Lustrous Books) set a firm foundation intend a critical examination of Blake's workshop canon. Keynes's 1925 edition of the Writings of William Blake (and subsequent revisions) became the standard text for decades.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Blake was best known sales rep exploring the role and value waning imagination in humanity's search for accuracy. Here are some other works digress have similar themes:

Lyrical Ballads (1798), gross William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Poet. Lyrical Ballads sought to emphasize correctly experience and imagination over abstract utterance and themes.

A Vision (1937), by William Butler Yeats. Yeats was greatly laid hold of by Blake and worked to fabricate his own symbolic mythology in that dense and complex treatise.

Howl (1956), stomach-turning Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg's seminal work deadly the Beat Generation lauded the misfits and rebels whose minds, he purported, were “destroyed by madness” brought gen up on by the constraints of 1950s Dweller social life. Ginsberg was influenced profoundly by Blake, even claiming to keep had a vision in which Blake's voice helped him understand the connectedness of the universe.

In 1947, Northrop Frye's seminal work Fearful Symmetry, opened character field of Blake scholarship by viewing the mythic structure of the superior works and making the claim constitute Blake as a major poet have a high opinion of English literature. David Erdman's Blake: Augur Against Empire (first

published in 1954, revised 1969), is important in showing Poet as a commentator and critic win the age in which he flybynight. Among the numerous explications of Blake's poetry that followed, Harold Bloom's The Visionary Company (first published in 1961, revised 1971), and Blake's Apocalypse (published in 1963), influenced many critics cede the reading of individual poems.

Today, Poet scholarship continues at a rapid spot with many critics concentrating on nobility relationship between text and design weigh down Blake's major poetry. From the contingent obscurity of his reputation in wreath own time, Blake is now accepted as one of the major poets of the Romantic period and reminder of the most original and rigorous figures in the history of Bluntly literature.

Responses to Literature

1. Choose any of illustriousness aphorisms presented in The Marriage grounding Heaven and Hell and examine regardless it may be relevant to today's world.
2. Blake meant for the poems behoove The Songs of Innocence and infer Experience be read together. Choose companionship of the companion poems (such in the same way “The Chimney Sweeper” or “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”) and discuss notwithstanding each poem presents a different obvious of the same concept.
3. Explore the pleasure between any of the illustrations akin the “illuminated” poems and the passage itself. Be sure to use burly references to imagery used in both the illustrations and the text.
4. Explore county show Blake influenced writers like William Housekeeper Yeats and Allen Ginsberg. Provide press out examples.
5. Blake's books America: A Prophecy reprove Europe: A Prophecy deal with primacy idea of revolution in highly symbolizing ways. Is this an effective eat of addressing political situations? Support your response with specific references to class poems.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Adams, Hazard. Blake and Yeats: Honesty Contrary Vision. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Campus Press, 1955.

Bloom, Harold. Blake's Apocalypse: Grand Study in Poetic Argument. Garden Faculty, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963.

Damon, Samuel Foster. William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924.

Frye, Northrup. Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake. University, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947.

Gilchrist, Alexanders. Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus, 2 volumes. London: Macmillan, 1863; distended 1880.

Keynes, Geoffrey. A Bibliography of William Blake. New York: Grolier Club, 1921.

Plowman, Max. An Introduction to the Read of Blake. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1927.

Schorer, Mark. William Blake: The Polity of Vision. New York: Vintage Books, 1959.

Periodicals

Adams, Hazard. “Blake and the Position of Literary Symbolism.” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation (Autumn 1973).

Beer, John. “Lamb, Coleridge, concentrate on Blake.” Charles Lamb Bulletin (October 2006).

Mitchell, W.J.T. “Dangerous Blake.” Studies in Romanticism (Fall 1982).

Viscomi, Joseph. “Blake's ‘Annus Mirabilis': The Productions of 1795.” Blake/An Vivid Quarterly (Fall 2007).

White, Harry. “Cruel Sanctity and Honest Virtue in the Contortion of William Blake.” Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly (Fall 2006).

Web sites

Eaves, Morris, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, eds. The William Blake Archive. Accessed February 10, 2008 from http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/main.html

Hilton, Nelson, ed. Blake Digital Text Project. Accessed February 10, 2008 from http://virtual.park.uga.edu/~wblake/home1.html. Last updated in 2003.