The Tyranny of Men: Blakean Landscapes

The Romantic era witnessed a radical reformation in social and political thought reflected in the prolific writings of the poets during this period. Romanticism is founded on a revolt against the prescribed rules of classicism and indeed a revolt against the contemporary oppressive institutions. William Blake was one such poet, whose immersion into the revolutionary atmosphere is clearly represented in his poetic works. The poets of William Blake’s time employed and pioneered many techniques that rebelled against the existing classical conventions, often in an attempt to expound their political, social or religious ideas in an age that frequently sought to statutorily silence the opposing voices. One of these acts of poetic rebellion against classicism, and one which is pivotal to Blake’s poetry, was the depiction of evocative landscapes. While we “must be prepared for seventeen types of ambiguity” when considering Blake’s work, it must be recognised that much of the meaning, or meanings as is often the case, is rooted in his poignant delineation of the landscape. Indeed this multiplicity of meaning may arguably be attributed to the lyrical tableaus he paints. This aspect of Blake’s writings is particularly relevant to the poems The Lamb, The Tyger and London all of which were published in Songs of Innocence and Experience and which predominantly involve themselves with a social discourse indicting the tyrannical institutions of state and church, as well as reflecting upon the nature of revolution. Thus these poetic protests can be seen to operate, at least in part, because of the unique Blakean landscapes.

Blake, although a religious man, vehemently opposed the repressive and demoralizing nature of contemporary ecclesiastical dogma. This attitude is articulated in The Lamb which depicts an evocative landscape that give rise to meaning. While it is impossible to definitively ascertain Blake’s intended implications, there are several plausible antinomian insights that may be gleaned through the depicted surroundings. The Lamb with its typically Romantic pastoral scenery generally alludes to the Bible and particularly to the Old Testaments Book of Psalms with the well known “the Lord is my shepherd”. It accordingly draws attention to the religious undertones of the poem. The idyllic imagery may be seen to be a reference to the heavily influential and culturally pervasive Sunday School Movement that existed at the time, where hymns containing similar countryside were composed in an effort to provide young children with religious instruction. This early induction into ecumenical ceremony and oppressive orthodoxy directly opposed Blake’s view whose conception of “the spiritual world [was] as familiar and as clearly delineated as it was to the mystics of the Middle Ages”. Thus while the scenery described draws connections between the 18th century moral hymns and The Lamb, it does not impose institutional piety but rather implicitly denies the Church by “rejoicing” in the Gods presence in the beauty of the natural world. This poems’ exultant celebration promotes the notion that God exists not in cloistered walls or inane ritual, but in every aspect of His creation and so reverence to the Creator need not involve the Church.

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The Experience counterpart to The Lamb is The Tyger with the compelling vistas poetically drawn no less crucial to the antinomian suggestions that may be extracted. The poems environment may essentially be viewed as a dreamscape where the speakers’ consciousness has temporarily transcended time and is thus able to witness and question a powerful component of the Divine Creation. There has been a multitude of diverse and often conflicting interpretations articulated about this poem in the past, however one interpretation suggests that the “forests of the night” are constellations and therefore the poem is set in the heavens. The supernatural is again ...

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