19th Century British Poetry

Reread William Blake’s poem “A Poison Tree” again, then:

1. write a paraphrase of the poem,
2. perform scansion on the poem,
   
3. and identify the meter of the poem.

Reread William Blake's poem "The Tyger", then answer the questions on "Understanding and Evaluating Poetry" on the handout that will be provided in class.

Following are the paraphrases that you came up with in class:
 
The narrator is telling a rose that it is sick. The narrator says that an invisible flying worm which flies in the night during a noisy storm discovered the rose’s bed of “crimson joy” and his “dark secret love” is killing the rose.


The narrator is saying that she moved around between fields and tasted “all the summer’s pride”, until she saw “the prince of love” who flew in the sunlight. The prince of love showed her flowers (lilies and “blushing” roses) for her hair and head and he took her to his garden where “golden pleasures” grow. Her wings got wet because of the “sweet” dew in May. Phoebus “fir’d” her voice anger. The prince of love caught her in his net of silk and imprisoned her in his cage of gold. He likes to sit and listen to her sing. He then jokes and fools around with her, pulls out her wing of gold, and ridicules her loss of freedom.


The narrator says that he walks around in the “charter’d” streets close by the “charter’d” Thames River and notices signs of weakness and sadness in the faces of the people that he meets. The narrator hears the crying of men, scared children, voices, and laws. In these cries he hears “mind-forg’d” fetters. The narrator hears how the cry of the chimney-cleaners is shocking the “blackning Church.” The unlucky soldier’s sigh flows in blood down the walls of the Palace. The narrator hears most clearly the harsh swearing of the young prostitute at the crying new-born baby.

The decided that the italicized sentences in the “London” paraphrase may still need some work.

Poets often make use of allusions; that is, they make reference to another text (art, myth, story, etc.). In recent years literary theorists opted for the term “intertextuality” to refer to references between different texts.


William Blake’s poem “Song” has many intertextual references to Greek mythology. Some of these references are obvious, like naming the god Phoebus (i.e. Apollo, who is the sun-god and also the god of poetic inspiration). Other references are not as obvious, but can be inferred. For instance “the prince of love” is probably a reference to Eros (or Cupid). This seems to be an appropriate assumption as “the prince of love” can “glide” (i.e. fly); after all, Cupid does have wings.

Exercise:

Read the poems “Song”, “The Lamb”, “The Tyger” and “A Poison Tree” and try to identify different examples of allusions or intertextual references.

What do you think a “intratextual reference” is? Can you find an example from one of these poems?

"The Lamb"

Two readings of "The Lamb":





A musical interpretation (choir) of "The Lamb":





"The Tyger"
Two readings of the "The Tiger":





A musical interpretation (acoustic) of "The Tyger":



A short film by Guilherme Marcondes based on "The Tyger":



A short lecture on the symbolism in "The Tyger":



The Lamb & The Tyger

A combined musical interpretation of "The Lamb" and "The Tyger":

William Blake was born in London. He attended art schools, including the Royal Academy school, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to an engraver. In 1800 he secured a patron at Gelpham, but found the arrangement stultifying. Determined to follow his “Divine Visions,” he returned to London. He published numerous collections of poetry illustrated with his own fantastic etchings until the 1820s, when he devoted himself exclusively to pictorial art. His early work reveals his dissatisfaction with the prevailing literary styles of his day; he took as his models the Elizabethan and early seventeenth-century poets, the Ossianic poems, and the work of Collins, Chatterton, and other eighteenth-century poets working outside the prevailing contemporary literary conventions. He discarded the heroic couplet for lines ending in near and partial rhyme, and employed novel rhythms and bold figures of speech that conveyed a multiplicity of meanings. Between 1795 and 1820, Blake developed a complex mythology to explain human history and suffering and came to see himself as a visionary, prophet figure, or Bard. His writings in this vein center around the biblical stories of the Fall, the Redemption, and the reestablishment of Eden, but Blake gave these materials his own spin. In his mythos, the Fall is seen as a psychic disintegration that results from the “original sin” of Selfhood, and the Redemption and return to Eden as a reinstitution of psychic wholeness, a “Resurrection of Unity.” His schema centers around a “Universal Man” who incorporates God rather than around a transcendent Being distinct from humanity.

From: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 4th Edition.