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INNOCENCE v EXPERIENCE 109 UWA 2012 William Blake’s Songs of Innocence associated with Experience was combined in 1794. Having compiled Songs of Purity in 1789, Blake designed that he was writing cheerful rhymes that children may well enjoy (Norton Anthology pg 118 footnote 1). Not all the poetry reflect a happy stance, various incorporate injustice, evil and suffering.

Blake represents these kinds of aspects of the world through the eye of ‘innocence’. In contrary Blake’s Tunes of Knowledge were crafted as unattractive and frightening versions of the identical world.

These types of poems were used to reflect a dreadful representation of the world as one of low income, disease and war. The Songs of Innocence were penned surrounding the end from the American Wave and the start of French Innovation, although Blake would have worked on them for years prior. The Songs of Experience had been etched during the middle and toward the end of the revolution and echo how the poet’s view of the world had been afflicted and altered by the horrific events. Blake’s work can be described as compilation of a number of ‘songs’.

Although each can stand as persistent poem many from Songs of Purity have a pair in Music of Encounter such as “Infant Joy ” “Infant Sorrow, “The Lamb ” “The Tyger and “The Ecchoing Green ” “The Earth’s Answer.  Taking “Infant Joy,  from Tunes of Purity, it is informed from the perspective of a baby “but two days aged.  The child is perceived as happy and joyous through lines just like “joy is my name/Sweet joy hit thee!  and plays on the common ideology that infants are happy and loveable.

Yet, it is counterpart “Infant Sorrow,  from Songs of Encounter, still told from the point of view of the fresh born, reveals the harsh fact of child birth: “My mother groand! My dad wept. /Into the harmful world I leapt.  The organisation of the work in this way gives two different views worldwide from the same perspective. I believe that the problem that inspires Blake definitely seems to be the assessment between the child years innocence and what we genuinely experience in the world. The modern concept of wearing ‘rose tinted glasses’ springs to mind, in the sense that as a child all of us view the world as this magnificent, gorgeous nd cheerful place but since we increase and learn even more about ourself and the universe our experience begin to ruin that ‘innocent’ view as well as the world becomes ugly, severe and vicious. The primary concentrate of the Blake’s work is to make contrast involving the fanciful, faithful view with the unjust, nasty and enduring world and the harsh fact that enduring, war, lower income and disease really bring. These tunes would have recently been read to children and it can be assumed that it was Blake’s attempt to instruct them something about the world by which they were coping with engaging their very own imaginations together with his use of beautifully constructed wording.

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