A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF BLAKE'S THE TYGER AND THE LAMB
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University Of Calcutta
DETAILED ANALYSIS OF BLAKE'S MYTHICAL WORLD WITH A REFERENCE TO THE TYGER AND THE LAMB AND SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE. IT ALSO CONTAINS AN OVERVIEW OF BLAKE'S TIME AND ITS IMPACT ON HIS WRITINGS.
WILLIAM BLAKE’S MYTHICAL WORLD IN THE TYGER AND THE LAMB
Romanticism was a break from the Augustan poetic tradition. There was clearly a shift of emphasis from the
neo-classical order and metrical discipline to the revolutionary spirit that characterizes English Romanticism -
poetically presented as Imagination. William Blake was one of the chiefest proponents of English Romanticism.
Any study of Blake’s poetry must consider the social and political background of the age, an age in which Blake
lived – an age, characterized by the revolutionary spirits of two major political incidents - the American
revolution and the French revolution.
Any literature of great worth is a mirror to its times. English romanticism as a literary ideology incorporated
the revolutionary zeal of the political incidents that took place around England at that point of time. It is only
by keeping in mind this background can one fully understand the significance of Blake’s unorthodox poetry
followed by the new poetic idiom of literally successors, Wordsworth and Coleridge.
A first look at Blake’s poetry would immediately reveal the simplicity of its syntax but beneath this syntactical
simplicity lies the depth of Blake’s prophetic vision. It's a vision which throws light on the horror and
corruption of an industrialized society. Blake’s poetry often showcases creative desires cruelly suppressed by
the hands of the society. Blake is a poet of creative emancipation. The figures of Blake's poetry often include
innocent children marked by an adult corrupt society. Like Milton, Blake too laments the fall of man but his fall
is not a theological one. He instead shows the spiritual fall of creative man. One has to have a clear knowledge
of Blake’s personal myth in order to fully understand the states of innocence and experience that the poems
THE TYGER & THE LAMB so vividly represent.
Blake’s mythical paradigm is defined by four states of being – Ulro, Beulah, Generation and Eden. The states
of innocence and experience correspond to Beulah and generation respectively while the former is
characterized by a child like gullibility and innocence, experience is characterized by a hooded rationality
which deprives the speaker to see things as the really are. Rather he see things as they appear to be. The
disparity between the two - the real and the apparent would be clear as soon as one reads the fiery
description of the tiger in the poem THE TYGER and then follows it up with the image of a docile and numbed
looking animal that Blake has drawn right after the poem, throwing the contrast to greater relief. Thus, while
the lamb symbolizes the meek Christian spirit and Christ himself, the tiger in the poem represents the forces
of devastating energy.
However, both matrices of symbolism need to be studied in the context of the vision frame of the two
different speakers. The child in the lamb speaks with a confidence that under lines his childlike assurance of
existence. Hence, the question at the beginning of the poem reports –
“ Little Lamb who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?”
It is followed by the comforting and confident assertion:
“Little lamb I will tell thee,
Little lamb I'll tell thee”
The symbolism in the poem is powerfully emphasized in the mingling of the three ontological states:
“He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a lamb.
He is meek and he is mild,
He became a little child.”
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