Themes and Styles in Songs of Experience Essay -- Innocence Songs of E

Themes and Styles in Songs of ExperienceWith reference to at least four poems, show how they arerepresentative of themes and styles in Songs of Experience.In the Songs of Experience Innocence has progressed towardsExperience, but it is consequential to remember that Blakes vision isessentially dialectical Innocence and Experience are co-relatedas the highroad to experience begins from innocence. The poems inSongs of Experience are darker in tone and outlook, affirming ableaker (or more realistic) view of creation than their Innocentcounterparts. Blake manifests the themes of cynicism, corruption,oppression, disillusionment and cruelty through the use of stylisticdevices such as mirroring, juxtapositions, archetypes and imagery.In The clod and the pebble, the poem provides two contrastingattitudes, one of selfless love for others, and the second, of Love asself-absorption and possessiveness. The original stanza seems to belongto the Songs of Innocence sequence, and the final stanz a to Songs ofExperience, and perhaps it is left to the reader to adjudicate betweenthe two attitudes. However, as a poem in the Songs of Experiencesequence, it is important that the final words are given to theselfish Pebble rather than to the down-trodden Clod, perhapssuggesting that it is the formers attitude which is seen to be themost insightful. Blake uses imagery such as the clod of carcass torepresent something insignificant, like mud, downtrodden. Blake alsouses alliteration on the phrase clod of clay to emphasize itsworthlessness. This imagery also creates an impression that the clayis malleable and unformed, implying youth, ignorance, naivet andinnocence. However, this wishy-washy cl... ...n on the private lives of Englanders an almost comicallymelodramatic scene of tombstones and Death-figure priests. It is thusperhaps too easy to dismiss this poem at once as nothing more thanthat. However, this simplicity allows the poem to become a didacticpoem, with new levels of re sonance rising from it with each reading.The level that first presents itself is explained above the churchtaking on itself the legislation and administration of morality. ThisSongs of Experience lyric deals with the repression of joys, desiresand instincts by the church and by prohibitive morality. Given thatthe poem deals with a vision of a journey into the garden, we couldperhaps also view the poem as a commentary on the ways that conscienceand guilt are impose on the imagination and on what is natural andinstinctual, the mind-forged manacles of London.