Background Notes on William Blake
Biography and Contextual Information
Born: 1759
Died: 1827
Blake was born into a relatively poor family and, despite
his eventual fame as a poet and considerable skill as an engraver lived in
poverty throughout his life.
Blake was a visionary who, as a child, reported seeing
sightings of angels in trees. He believed that a poet should be like a prophet and
teach people the correct way to live their lives. For him, the correct way to
live life was to retain the innocence of childhood by using imagination and
creativity to fight against the soul-deadening developments of the Industrial
Revolution and the increasing dominance of Science, Reason and Logic.
Other
Romantic Poets:
Wordsworth 1770 –
1850
Colerdige 1772 – 1853
Byron 1788 – 1824
Shelley 1792 – 1822
Keats 1795 – 1821
Major
Dates:
1700’s Industrial Revolution
1776
American
Revolution
1789 French
Revolution
Major Themes:
Blake believed in the absolute freedom of the individual.
This is not a very revolutionary idea today when people are commonly heard
arguing that they ‘have rights’ and that their government, their state, their
employers, their parents or their teachers cannot tell them what to do.
However, 350 years ago, when Blake was writing, there was a much stronger
belief in the concept of duty. The individual had a duty of obedience to their
family, to the King and through the Church, to God. If this seems weird, a
somewhat stereotypical modern day example of this may be found in
As such Blake attacked anything that he felt undermined the
ideal of individual freedom. Such as:
Blake believed that man is at his best when he is a child.
Children are the ideal symbol of freedom, purity and innocence and Blake sees
modern living, what he calls Experience, as ruining this Innocence of
childhood. Blake’s most famous poems are the ‘Songs of Innocence’ and ‘Songs
of Experience’ written between 1789 and 1794 where he contrasts the Innocence and purity of childhood with
the greed and wickedness of Experience.
Blake is, however, realistic and does not believe that we can maintain an air
of childish naivety throughout our lives. Instead, he believes that, although
our eventual corruption is inevitable, we can prolong our innocence by fighting
against things like the corruption of the church, the evils of Capitalist
exploitation and the closed mindedness of adults who refuse to see the beauty
of creativity and imagination – like Mr. Gradgrind.