Shiraz University
Facultyy of Literature and Humanities Sciences
nces
M.A. Thesis
In English Literature
C
Criticism
of Naïve Innocence:
AS
Study of Blake’s Beulah Poems
By:
Sara Setayesh
Supervised by:
Dr. ParvinGhasemi
December 2011
In The Name of God
ii
IN THE NAME OF GOD
CRITICISM OF NAÏVE INNOCENCE:
A STUDY OF BLAK’S BEULAH POEMS
BY
SARA SETAYESH
THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN
PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ART (M.A.)
IN
ENGLISH LITERATURE
SHIRAZ UNIVERSITY
SHIRAZ
ISLUMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN
EVALUATED AND APPROVED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE AS:
………………… P. GHASEMI, Ph.D., ASSOCIATE PROF. OF
ENGLISHLTERATURE (CHAIRMAN)
………………… F. POURGIV, Ph.D., ASSOCIATE PROF. OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE
………………… A. ANUSHIRAVANI, Ph.D., ASSOCIATE PROF. OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE
DECEMBER 2011
iii
To Those from Whom I Learned
And to Those I Love
iv
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Ghasemi for her
expertise and thorough and helpful revisions. I am also grateful to Dr.
Pourgiv and Dr. Anushiravani for their recommendations and
assistance. I give a special note of thanks to Dr. Abjadian who is a
mountain of motivation and encouragement and last but not least, I
appreciate the love and loyalty of my family.
v
Abstract
Criticism of Naïve Innocence: A Study of Blake’s Beulah Poems
By
Sara Setayesh
Blake is a poet with a revolutionary spirit; he condemns the very
traditions and beliefs that keep imagination and freedom in bondage. He
is against the vices of his society and talks about hidden powers in man.
Blake talks about four states of being; he does not approve of
staying in the first state, Beulah, which is a stage of passivity and
emphasizes the necessity of passing through the second state,
Experience or Generation, since it is an active state that leads to
Organized Innocence. One falls to the hell of Ulro if he does not pass
the second state successfully.
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experienceshow the two contrary
states of the soul and they depict the necessity of passing through the
first two states to achieve higher innocence. Each song of innocence
has its counterpart in experience that further stresses the importance of
facing difficulties and trying to overcome them in experience.The
Book of Thelis aboutThel who is afraid of experience as a prelude to a
higher state while Oothoon in Visionsof the Daughters of Albion
enters experienceby breaking the bonds of Urizen.
vi
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Introduction ................................................................ 1
1.1. Introduction ................................................................................ 1
1.2. Review of Literature .................................................................. 4
1.3. Significance of the Study ......................................................... 17
1.4. Purpose of the Study ................................................................ 18
1.5. Methodology of the Study ....................................................... 18
Chapter Two: The Revolutionary Spirit of the Age and That of
Blake and His Social, Political and Religious views................... 20
Chapter Three: The Definition of the Four States of Being in
Blake ................................................................................................... 46
3.1. Emphasis on the Existence of the Four States of Being in Blake
and Their Definition................................................................ 46
3.1.1.The Definition of Beulah ................................................... 50
3.1.2. The Definition of Generation ............................................ 58
3.2. The Reflection of the First Two States in Blake’s Poetry and
the Necessity of a Transition: An Overview........................... 60
vii
Chapter Four: An Application of the Theories of the Previous
Chapter in Beulah Poems ................................................................. 74
4.1. Introduction .............................................................................. 74
4.2. Songs of Innocence................................................................... 74
4.2.1. Introduction....................................................................... 74
4.2.2. The Ecchoing Green ......................................................... 77
4.2.3. The Lamb........................................................................... 79
4.2.4. The Little Black Boy .......................................................... 80
4.2.5. The Blossom ...................................................................... 83
4.2.6. The Chimney Sweeper ....................................................... 84
4.2.7. The Little Boy Lost and Found .......................................... 86
4.2.8. Laughing Song .................................................................. 86
4.2.9. A Cradle Song ................................................................... 87
4.2.10. The Divine Image ............................................................ 90
4.2.11. Holy Thursday ................................................................. 92
4.2.12. Night ................................................................................ 94
4.2.13. Spring .............................................................................. 95
4.2.14. Nurse’s Song ................................................................... 96
4.2.15. Infant Joy......................................................................... 97
4.2.16. A Dream .......................................................................... 99
4.3. The Book of Thel .................................................................... 100
4.4. Songs of Experience ............................................................... 104
4.3.1. Introduction..................................................................... 104
4.3.2. Earth’s Answer................................................................ 106
4.3.3. The Clod and the Pebble ................................................. 111
4.3.4. Holy Thursday ................................................................. 113
4.3.5. The Little Girl Lost.......................................................... 115
4.3.6. The Little Girl Found ...................................................... 117
viii
4.3.7. The Chimney Sweeper ..................................................... 119
4.3.8. Nurse’s Song ................................................................... 123
4.3.9. The Sick Rose .................................................................. 124
4.3.10. The Angel ...................................................................... 127
4.3.11. The Tyger ...................................................................... 129
4.3.12. My Pretty Rose Tree...................................................... 134
4.3.13. Ah! Sun-Flower ............................................................. 136
4.3.14.The Lilly ......................................................................... 138
4.3.15. The Garden of Love ...................................................... 140
4.3.16. The Little Vagabond...................................................... 142
4.3.17. London .......................................................................... 143
4.3.18. The Human Abstract ..................................................... 147
4.3.19. Infant Sorrow ................................................................ 151
4.3.20. A Poison Tree ................................................................ 152
4.3.21. A Little Boy Lost............................................................ 153
4.3.22. A Little Girl Lost ........................................................... 155
4.3.23. To Tirzah ....................................................................... 158
4.3.24. The School Boy ............................................................. 162
4.3.25. The Voice of the Ancient Bard ...................................... 163
4.4. Visions of the Daughters of Albion ........................................ 164
Chapter Five: Conclusion ............................................................... 170
Works Cited .................................................................................... 176
ix
Chapter One: Introduction
1.1. Introduction
J. Bronowski (1965) believes that the years 1760 to 1815 is the
turbulent age influenced by the American and the French Revolution
as well as the Industrial Revolution when people started to refuse
traditional ways of doing things (4). Industrial Revolution made men
see their destiny as shaped by their own hand not as an act of God.
Machines and factories exploited man and “made him a man alone”
(5). Industrial Revolution like the Renaissance had a great influence
on different aspects of life: it changed western thought, conditions of
life, politics and even poetry. It also ‘in the long run changed man’s
conception of himself” and made him “the master of his own fate” (7).
William Blake’s life and works clearly depict the situation of that
age and one can hearthe sound of “war, oppression, the machine,
poverty and the loss of personality” throughout his poems (16).
Bronowski describes him as “odd, unbending, wayward and selfabsorbed, whose mind was all visual and visionary” (10). Blake’s
early songs are lucid, showing hopes of the French Revolution but
towards 1800 with Napoleon’s betrayal of the Revolution, he became
more and more disillusioned and turned to his prophetic books.
Bronowski mentions that like other leaders of his age Blake showed
discontent for the established Church of England (11); so the most
1
dominating and steady symbols in Blake’s poetry are those of the
Sunday school and picnic (154).
Frye (1966) provides a description of Blake’s views as a poet with
Christian religious views, philosophical views opposed to that of
Bacon, Newton and Locke, with political, social views similar to
“contemporary liberal opinion” and his art influenced by his “cultural
environment” (5). According to Frye a famous principle in science
and philosophy is that “the simplest questions are those that only great
genius can answer, because it takes great genius to become aware of
them as questions”. This rule is applicable to poets and literature as
well because whenever a great poet expressed a new conception of
human situation he was considered as obscure or even mad; that is
exactly what happened to Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Dickens, D.H.
Lawrence and Blake.
Blake’s conception of human nature in the Songs of Experience is
in accord with the 18th century view of man: “Man {is} simply the
outcome of education and conditioning …and {should} behave
according to an accepted morality…they need control from without”
(Frye 6). Frye compares the characters in the Songs: the individual in
the Songs of Experience has lost his benign impulses as opposed to
individuals in The Songs ofInnocence with affectionate and
sympathetic impulses”; superficial minds of characters in experience
affirm rationalism as opposed to the mentality of innocence “as a
condition of perfection, a completeness and harmony of being”(6).
Andrew Frederick Kaufman (1985) in chapter two of his thesis
states that Songs of Innocence depict “a state of mind that exists prior
to the disjunction or conflict between imaginative and corporal
understanding” (1). He adds that these songs “presents a sheltered ,
2
Edenic world, in which one can not be victimized or permanently lost,
because of the benign protectiveness of guardian figures, or of the
surroundings themselves”(244).
According to Gillham Blake associates Innocence with childhood
since children have notentered the world of responsibility and so they
show a simple faith. But “All men have their innocent moments” and
the important thing is “the perfection of Innocence” (6). Gillham
believes that in “London” the poet as social critic criticizes the
influence of social organizations and institutions on man (19); he is
against Burke’s view “that man simply owes his especial being to the
institutions that humanize him” (49).
When Blake was born, England was an agricultural society and
when he died it was an industrialized nation. Blake’s “London” of
Songs of Experience clearly shows the London of Blake’s time;
Bloom describes it as “a city in which the traditional English liberties
of free press, free speech, and the rights of petition and assembly were
frequently denied” (xiv). Bloom says that Victorian literary historians
called the early years of the nineteenth century “Romantic” meaning a
timeless, recurrent art as opposed to classical and neoclassical art.
(xvi). According to Bloom, one of the qualities that distinguishes
Romantic poetry from most of English poetry is the apocalyptic and
longing language appearing in for example, Wordsworth’s Recluse
and Prelude and Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell (xx). He adds
that Romantic poetic theory speaks of the creative power of artist or
poet (xxii).
In his book, TheVisionary Company; A Reading of English
Romantic Poetry (1971), Bloom completely analyses the concept of
Beulah. He says that John Bunyan refers to Beulah in Pilgrim’s
3
Progress as the married land, the world of Solomon’s song, the place
of the renewal of contract between the Bride and the Bridegroom, A
place lying beyond morality and despair, upon the borders of heaven.
Bloom refers to 4 states of being in Blake’s poetry: “innocence, or
Beulah; experience, or Generation; organized, higher innocence, or
Eden; and the Hell of rational self-absorption or Ulro”. Then he
explains that Blake’s Beulah is an ambiguous state because ‘its
innocence dwells dangerously near to ignorance, its creativity is allied
to destructiveness, its beauty to terror” (20). Ulro, Generation and
Eden include “the overt horrors of our existence…our worldly
struggles and our visionary end” respectively (21).
1.2. Review of Literature
As the purpose of the study requires knowledge of the Romantic
period and the revolutionary spirit of the age, the following books and
articles were reviewed.
Andrew Frederick Kaufman’s Doctorate Dissertation on Authority
and Vision: A Study of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of
Experience (1985) investigates the idea that for Blake “all forms of
temporal authority regardless of intensions are pernicious”. He talks
about The Songs of Experience and the way that they show a
benevolent nature and a kind, effective type of “adult guardianship” (1).
He refers to the “Introduction” to Songs of Experience ,”To Tirzah”,
“The little girl Lost’, “The Little Girl Found” and ‘The Voice of the
Ancient Bard” as parting from other poems of experience collection
because “authority here is understood as higher truth , rather than
4
enforceable power” (2). In chapter IV he depicts” a deluded and
foolish” persona in “Infant Sorrow”, “Earth’s Answer”, “The Tiger”,
and “ The Angel’ who “understands authority only in terms of
enforceable power” (2).
In chapter V, he analyzes “London” , “The Chimney Sweeper”,
“Holy Thursday’, “the Little Vagabond”, “ The Garden of Love” and
“The School Boy’ and concludes that reality in these poems is shown
‘in such a way that neither imagination nor political reform could
redeem it” (2-3). He believes that man’s conception of authority
depends on his understanding: whether he perceives imaginatively or
in a literalistic manner; on the one hand, to view “authority as higher,
imaginative truth” results from a symbolic understanding that makes
man “unaffected by temporal power.” Through a literal understanding,
on the other hand man uses “his corporeal faculties” and so
“comprehends authority only as enforceable power”; so he feels
victimized (24).
J. Bronowski in his book, William Blake and the Age of Revolution
(1965), explicitly states that his book is about” the turbulent age of
William Blake” (10). He believes that the symbol of innocence is the
child and the symbol of experience is the father (156).He also argues
that about twenty poems in The Songs of Innocence and of Experience
are about a child and six of them are the story of a child lost and found
(156). In this story Blake talks about “the progression which child and
father are born to make’ ; in “The Little Boy Lost” the child mistakes
a vapor for his father and follows it and in “The Little Boy Found”
God as a father figure helps him find his searching mother (157). In
“The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl Found” the child is not lost
but the parents are following a false image and finally they find their
5
child as “experience has been guided back to innocence” (157-8). In
all, this story of the child lost and found teaches a lesson: “it is no
longer enough for the innocent boy to go from false experience to
true, by chance: experience itself must learn…to follow a greater
innocence, by choice”; so it becomes “a searching test of faith” (158).
Bronowski adds that throughout The Songs of Experience Blake
equals the father as the dominating symbol of experience with the
priest whose ‘love has grown rigid in jealousy” (160). He indicates
that in “A Little Boy Lost” and “A Little Girl Lost” of The Songs of
Experience, the lost children “begin in thoughtless innocence, making
no judgment of experience false or true” and they are destroyed (160).
In the “Infant Sorrow”, innocence wants “to lead experience back to
love and to delight” but innocence is crucified by the “trees of
sensuous experience”:
My father then with holy book,
In his hands a holy book,
Pronounc’d curses on my head
And bound me in a mirtle shade. (161)
Bronowski talks about “a poison tree” of deceit in Songs of
Experience and considers the tree in “The Human Abstract” as “the
tree of mystery of state religion… the knowledge of good and evil”
(163). He considers Songs of Experience as “Songs of Indignation” in
which experience takes different forms: “Newtonian rationalism “the
starry floor”; materialism “the wat’ry shore”; religion the mystery;
jealousy the thorny rose, cankered by self-love” (164).
In “Point of View and Context in Blake’s Songs”, published in
Blake: A Collection ofCritical Essays, Robert F. Gleckner (1957),
points to two main elements of complication in Blake’s poetry: one is
6
context and the other one is point of view. He emphasizes the necessity
of recognizing Blake’s lyrics as expressions of innocence or
representations of experience. By point of view he means persona and
concludes that the ‘poet speaks in many moods and states of mind” (2).
According to Northrop Frye, Blake saw” the rationalizing of evil as
an essential part of the evil itself” (3). His observations have been
supported by a number of other scholars. Martin K. Nurmi (1964) in
his essay “ Fact and Symbol in “ The Chimney Sweeper” of Blake’s
Songs of Innocence” and David V. Erdman (1954) in “Blake’s Vision
of Slavery” interpret Blake’s poetry in the light of the evils of his
lifetime (3).
Frye points out that in his lyrics, Blake uses a great deal of
mythological and allegorical material taken from Christian and
classical sources (3). Also in “The Complexities of Blake’s
“Sunflower”: An Archetypal Speculation” and in “Little Girls Lost:
Problems of a Romantic Archetype” William J.Keith (1966) and Irene
H. Chayes (1963) have an archetypal look on Blake’s poetry (3).
Therefore the focus of the articles rests on analyzing different symbols
and imagery.
The emphasis in “Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to
Blake” (1964) written by E. D. Hirsch, JR. is mostly laid on Blake’s
most successful work Songs of innocenceand of Experience. It is
actually “a poem-by-poem commentary” (viii). Hirsch studies Blake
by tracing the course of his poetry and commenting on his Songs of
Innocence andof Experience. He puts emphasis on plurality of Blake’s
systems, the radical changes in his outlook and the impact of
Revolution on Blake. He also studies his revolutionary and naturalistic
works. He believes that the best way to study Blake is in the light of
7
the system that he developed: “the dialectical principles called
“Prolific” and “Devourer” , the human aspects called “Tharmas” ,
“Urthona”, “Urizen”, and “Luvah” , the psycho-cosmological states of
being called “Ulro” , “Generation” , “Beulah” , and “eternity” (3).
Hirsch gives a description of Beulah: it is an inward, “naturalistic
ideal”; a state of “threefold vision” that “transcends all strife and
conflict by an inward, spiritual transformation of Nature” (3-4). It is a
“garden… {place of} a calm sexual fulfillment” (128); It is a “world
of innocence, a place which is sacramental and referential, not an end
in itself” (134); a place of “innocent pleasures” (160). It is “an inward
state… {That} filters out everything violent or unpleasant in nature.
“It is the spiritual domain of the pastoral” and “a pastoral land created
by the human mind” (323).
D. G. Gillham’s book entitled Blake’s Contrary States (1966),
analyzes Songs of Innocence and of Experience with the assumption
that “they explain themselves if they are read together” (1). He
questions previous interpretations of the Songs that overload them
with symbolic significance and mythology, something that Wicksteed
has done in his book (2). He casts doubt on previous research in the
field. Gillham notes that R. F. Gleckner’s analysis of the Songs in the
light of the symbols derived from the “Prophesies” has distorted the
poetry (2). But Stanley Gardner’s emphasis on analyzing the symbols
in their context is of considerable interest to him (2). Similarly, E. D.
Hirsch’s critical insights on The Songs of Innocence have been
supported by him (2).
On talking about the persona in the Songs Gillham declares that the
speakers can not be the poet himself (3); he says, “none of the songs
can be taken simply as a direct personal utterance,” writes Gillham, so
8
Blake is, “detached from the conditions of awareness imposed on the
speakers of his poems” (4) . His idea is in line with that of Gleckner.
He suggests that innocence can not explain itself so “the poet must
stand outside the state”; the poet stands beyond the state of Experience
as he does not suffer from the qualities he attributes to this state (4).
Wicksteed believes that poems such as “London” or “The Garden of
Love”, “show natural human propensities being smothered by
institution” (qtd. in Gillham 4). Gillham considers Blake a social and
moral critic and fully investigates his criticism of nature, love and
religion.
Related to our discussion here is also Harold Bloom’s “The
Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry” (1971). It
is a valuable source which exactly refers to the concept of Beulah: it is
the ideal within sexual reach, a place where we lived as children which
one can reenter in sexual intercourse, sleep and dream, it is Milton’s
Garden of Eden, a female state associated with spring, shown as
flowers in the engraved illustrations (26); it has an essential role in
artistic creativity (30); but its potential dangers lie in the fact that Ulro
is underneath it (28). Bloom’s argument about the contrary states of the
Songs seems convincing: “innocence is the married land Blake called
Beulah; Experience is the harsh but vital world of Generation” (33).
Jackie DiSalvo (2009) reviews Saree Makdisi’s book, William
Blake and the Impossible History of the 1970s (2002) and summarizes
his main points. Makdisi analyzes Blake’s radicalism based on
individual rights explains that in Blake’s view social processes are
internalized in humans and the only way toward freedom for the
enslaved workers is the reorganization of social relationships (145).
9
Robert W Rix (2005) in “Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, the
French Revolution, and London,” talks of the basic formula of
“Prophetic” in his poems. He explains Blake’s view about a prophet:”
his function is to act as a public voice of conscience…his ability to
influence public behavior…{a} seer {who} does not rely on
supernatural forces…he discerns the natural effects caused by natural
tyranny” (24). He concludes that his “prophetic” is “a public word of
caution” based on the cruelty done to humans (25).
Daniel Schierenbeck in “”Sublime Labours”: Aesthetics and
Political Economy in Blake’s Jerusalem” (2007) explains the
importance of aesthetic perception in Blake’s epic poem Jerusalem. In
Jerusalem Blake pinpoints the dangers of associating the repose with
the beautiful and stresses the importance of sublime labour to rouse
Albion (England) from its slumber state (22). Blake connects the
sublime with the labour and he himself as a poet and painter
experienced effects of the division of art and labour (22). The author
puts forward the theory of the relationship between aesthetics and
political economy As the purpose of the study requires knowledge of
the Romantic period and the revolutionary spirit of the age, the
following books and articles were reviewed.
Andrew Frederick Kaufman’s Doctorate Dissertation on Authority
and Vision: A Study of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of
Experience (1985) investigates the idea that for Blake “all forms of
temporal authority regardless of intensions are pernicious”. He talks
about The Songs of Experience and the way that they show a
benevolent nature and a kind, effective type of “adult guardianship” (1).
He refers to the “Introduction” to Songs of Experience ,”To Tirzah”,
“The little girl Lost’, “The Little Girl Found” and ‘The Voice of the
10
Ancient Bard” as parting from other poems of experience collection
because “authority here is understood as higher truth , rather than
enforceable power” (2). In chapter IV he depicts” a deluded and
foolish” persona in “Infant Sorrow”, “Earth’s Answer”, “The Tiger”,
and “ The Angel’ who “understands authority only in terms of
enforceable power” (2).
In chapter V, he analyzes “London” , “The Chimney Sweeper”,
“Holy Thursday’, “the Little Vagabond”, “ The Garden of Love” and
“The School Boy’ and concludes that reality in these poems is shown
‘in such a way that neither imagination nor political reform could
redeem it” (2-3). He believes that man’s conception of authority
depends on his understanding: whether he perceives imaginatively or
in a literalistic manner; on the one hand, to view “authority as higher,
imaginative truth” results from a symbolic understanding that makes
man “unaffected by temporal power.” Through a literal understanding,
on the other hand man uses “his corporeal faculties” and so
“comprehends authority only as enforceable power”; so he feels
victimized (24).
J. Bronowski in his book, William Blake and the Age of Revolution
(1965), explicitly states that his book is about” the turbulent age of
William Blake” (10). He believes that the symbol of innocence is the
child and the symbol of experience is the father (156).He also argues that
about twenty poems in The Songs of Innocence and of Experience are
about a child and six of them are the story of a child lost and found (156).
In this story Blake talks about “the progression which child and father
are born to make’ ; in “The Little Boy Lost” the child mistakes a
vapor for his father and follows it and in “The Little Boy Found” God
as a father figure helps him find his searching mother (157). In “The
11