August 4, 2021
From Gerald R. Lucas
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Little Lamb who made thee? |
Notes & Commentary
- ↑ Perhaps the best example of the Songs of Innocence, “The Lamb” has a child-like narrator—perhaps the naked one in Blake’s accompanying illustration. The lamb is a traditional symbol of innocence and God’s love, and his expression here is joyful, tender, and “thoroughly humantarian” (Battenhouse 1958, pp. 53, 54). There’s a sort of mysticism in Blake’s innocent voice which suggests a deeper meaning (Battenhouse 1958, p. 54).
Blake’s vision was one of a Romantic intensification of the everyday—of seeing the value in the mundane. These poetic visions a way of consider the observable qualities and, more importantly, filter them through the poetic imagination in order to understand the innermost essence of what is being observed (Tomlinson 1987, pp. 14, 16). Tomlinson explains that “it is when any one individual moment is perceived with such fullness and intensity that it seems to become a moment outside ordinary time, and to last for ever” (Tomlinson 1987, p. 16). Blake thought that this poetic insight could uncover something infinite about the subjects, and it was his duty to help others cleanse these “the doors of perception” (Tomlinson 1987, p. 17). This poetic act might tell us more about the poet than about the object—they are not objective descriptions, but subjective responses—but perhaps they help to develop our own imaginative empathy by challenging our own observations of the world and allowing us to react to the poet’s vision. Blake called alternate visions “contraries” or opposite forces that help to define, to motivate, and to reconcile our own views of reality (Tomlinson 1987, pp. 19–20). Thus, innocence and experience have contraries as their primary focus.
Compare this poem with its contrary “The Tyger.” - ↑ The poem’s opening echoes the form of childern’s religious instruction with catechistic questions and answers (Greenblatt 2018, p. 50). Similar questions are mused about by the speaker of “The Tyger,” but the answers remain ambiguous in the poem of experience.
- ↑ The Lamb is threefold her: a literal lamb, the speaker, and Christ.
Work Cited
- Battenhouse, Henry M. (1958). English Romantic Writers. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
- Gardner, Stanley (1969). Blake. Literary Critiques. New York: Arco.
- Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. (2018). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. The Major Authors. 2 (Tenth ed.). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393603095.
- Tomlinson, Alan (1987). Song of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake. MacMillan Master Guides. London: MacMillan Education.
Links
- Blake at the Internet Archive.
