Blakes Songs Of Innocence And Experience

The first and most popular of Blake's famous "Illuminated Books," in a facsimile edition reproducing all 31 brightly colored plates. Additional printed text of each poem.

Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (first published in 1794), an expansion of Blake's first illuminated book Songs of Innocence. The poems and artwork were reproduced by copperplate engraving and colored with washes by hand. Blake republished Songs of Innocence and Experience several times, often changing the number and order of the plates. The spellings, punctuation and capitalizations are those of the original Blake manuscripts. William Blake (1757 – 1827) was a British poet, painter, visionary mystic, and engraver, who illustrated and printed his own books. Blake proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

Preface by David Bindman, General Editor. Foreword. List of Abbreviations. Introduction. The Plates with a transcription of the text. Plates From Other Copies. Commentary on the text and the plates. Appendix. Works Cited.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. William Blake was also a painter before the songs of innocence and experience and made paintings such as Oberon, Titania, and Puck dancing with fairies. "Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and "Fall". Often, interpretations of this collection centre around a mythical dualism, where "Innocence" represents the "unfallen world" and "Experience" represents the "fallen world". Blake categorizes our modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a state of protected innocence rather than original sin, but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience", a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes. The volume's "Contrary States" are sometimes signalled by patently repeated or contrasted titles: in Innocence, Infant Joy, in Experience, Infant Sorrow; in Innocence, The Lamb, in Experience, The Fly and The Tyger. The stark simplicity of poems such as The Chimney Sweeper and The Little Black Boy display Blake's acute sensibility to the realities of poverty and exploitation that accompanied the "Dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution.

A collection of poems describing the curious menagerie of guests and residents, human and animal, at William Blake's inn.

Blake's original color plates are faithfully reproduced in this illuminated edition of his early poems

Digitized facsimiles of the 1794 and 1826 London editions, both from the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) is William Blake's best-known work, containing such familiar poems as 'London', 'Sick Rose' and 'The Tyger'. Evolving over the author's lifetime, the collection was printed by Blake himself on his own press. This Reader's Guide: - Explains the unique development of Songs as an illuminated book - Considers the earliest reactions to the text during Blake's lifetime, and his gathering posthumous reputation in the nineteenth century - Explores modern critical approaches and recent debates - Discusses key topics that have been of abiding interest to critics, including the relationship between text and image in Blake's 'composite art' Insightful and stimulating, this introductory guide is an invaluable resource for anyone who is seeking to navigate their way through the mass of criticism surrounding Blake's most widely-studied work.