Blake Outline

English 203

Dr. Fike

Review of Main Points from Romantic Intro: 

1. Romantic poetry is a poetry of _____________________________.

2. Nature is in a _________________________________ with the imagination.

3. The mind has the power to ___________ the universe and to create ___________.

How the Three Quotations Illustrate the Difference Between 18th and 19th Century Poetics:

1. Rasselas: 

2. "Cooper's Hill": 

3. "Tintern Abbey”:

Blake's Ideas:

1.  Contraries: 

2.  Blake's Main Assumptions:

• Reality is
• All existence derives from
• The divine spark in each of us is the ___________________________________________.
• Christ = _________________________________.
• What are expressions of the divine in us? 
• Bad things happen when human virtues are ____________________________________________________.
• Blake goes further:  The soul
• See example:  "Little Black Boy":

3.  The Garden of Eden:  The "grove" is the Garden of Eden.  For Blake the following events are parallel: Creation, the fall of  Adam and Eve, the descent of the soul.  Sacred history parallels an individual person's experience; all involve spiritual diminution.

• Paradise:innocence—
• Fall:experience—
• Paradise Regained:organized innocence—
• POINT:  Innocence and experience are not _______________.  Term:  felix culpa. 
• POINT:  As in scared history, so in individual experience.  Secularizing sacred experience.
• Luke 17:20: 
• Blake on page 39, plate 11: 

A Look at Some of the Poems:

1. "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence:
   1. Piper vs. bard
   2. Shape of a poet's career
   3. Movement out of innocence

2. How does the "Introduction" to the Songs of Experience differ? 

3. "Earth's Answer": 

4. "The Sick Rose":

5. "To Tirzah":

6. "London":  Another poem suggesting that sexuality is the root of society's ills.

1. What things in the first two stanzas suggest restrictions or control?

2. What things relate to blackness?

3. What do "blast" and "blight" mean?  What parallels are there?  Why "hearse"?

4. How are contraries at work here?

5. What is the moral of the poem?

Wordsworth: 

1. Discuss connections between WW's "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" and "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."  In other words, how does the latter illustrate the main points in the former?

2. What does "Tintern Abbey" say about nature?
3. Identify and comment on the stages of development that WW identifies in lines 58-111.
4. Why is Dorothy, the poet's sister, addressed in the poem?  In other words, what does WW want her to do for herself and for him?