"Songs of Innocence and of Experience"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses and analyzes William Blake's poem, "Songs of Innocence and of Experience." The paper focuses on the extent to which the nature of illustration affords greater subversive power than text in Blake's poem. The paper describes the content of the poem and suggests that in "Songs of Innocence and of Experience," the text illuminates the illustrations.

From the Paper:

"Readers today tend to feel that Blake's words could stand alone and still have complete meaning. Indeed, many publishers today include few or none of the prints in their editions of the Songs. However, illustrated books always rely on illustration to varying degrees to add something important to their meaning. Images can also be subversive in more striking and emotive ways than most text, while simultaneously being subtler. Moreover, Blake wrote at a time when the illustrated book was widely respected as a serious genre of literature, unlike today. Blake's readers would have been much more accustomed to interpreting images in complex ways, and familiar with the use of religious allegory and political imagery at the time. Therefore, in Blake's own time, although the words crystallised the meanings of the illustrations, the images would have had subversive meaning for the reader without the need for text. Blake plays with the relation between word and image in his work. Indeed, although he refers to his own work as an 'illuminated manuscript', Blake even subverts the idea of the medieval illuminated manuscript itself, by challenging the idea that the illustrations 'illuminate' the text. The idea implies that the text has meanings that the illustrations simply reflect and clarify. In Songs of Innocence and of Experience, the text illuminates the illustrations."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Blake, William, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967)
• 'CD-WOW Compilations', available at http://www9.cd-wow.com/compilations.php [accessed 2 January 2006]
• Keynes, Geoffrey, Introduction to William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967)
• Miller, J. Hillis, Illustration, (London: Reaktion, 1995)
• Wordsworth, William, The Prelude, 2nd edn, ed. Helen Darbishire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959)

More papers on "Songs of Innocence and of Experience":

• Poem Review # 28613 : "Blake's "Songs of Innocence and of Experience"
• Analytical Essay # 4002 : "The Role of the Poet in William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" and "Experience"
• Poem Review # 103314 : "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience"

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