Blakes Cry For A Voice

8 Pages 2002 Words

Blake’s cry for a voice

William Blake had a vision. It was a thought that changed the way poetry and writing would be viewed from here to eternity. Blake’s point of views and associations with the characters represents a change in the way the reader dictates who the victim is really and who is not. In Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” from the Songs of Innocence and Experience, both aspects of heaven and hell can be examined just the same as a good versus evil aspect of the two different styles of the poem. One poem, two totally different views on manners, morals, customs, and what is right and wrong.
To understand what William Blake was thinking and trying to say the reader must first know about how Blake’s mind worked. Forgotten by his contemporaries but venerated by modern society, British poet, prophet, publisher, and artist William Blake was the earliest of a long line of reformist romantic poets. Regarded widely as a mad man, Blake was above all else a rebel whose anti-authoritarian spirit, and belief in freedom and individuality formed the basis of his revolutionary poetry. With his own unique style and form, Blake’s poetry outlived its critics, and William Blake is now widely identified as one of the greatest lyric poets of all time.

From humble beginnings as the son of a hosier, Blake was essentially self taught, drawing inspiration and influence from German mystic Jakob Bohemia and the pivotal works of Emanuel Swedenborg. After his preliminary education, he briefly attended the Royal Academy before being requested to leave after challenging the school’s president. Later on Blake managed to establish friendships with renowned academicians such as John Flaxman and Henery Fuseli, whose works may or may not have influenced his later poetry. Blake is usually referred to as a pre-romantic as result of the manner in which he would reject the traditional neoclassical style and modes of thought.
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