London by William Blake Flashcards
Story + Message of ‘London’
- Narrator is walking through the city of London and talking about groups of people & organisations as he passes them
- Message is that London is unambiguously corrupt – authoritarian abuse of power + suffering of those under it
Tone of London:
- Immensely negative tone, which replicates his own disillusionment with both the government and the monarchy, as well as the Church
- Critical tone
Imagery of London:
- Sensory imagery in “London” mainly focuses on visual and auditory elements
- The speaker describes the sounds of the city, such as “every cry of every Man” and “every Infants cry of fear,” which gives readers a mental picture of a crowded and noisy place filled with people suffering in pain
Key features of Romanticism:
o Recognition of the influence of the sense and of personal emotion
o That the heart (emotion) is considered more powerful than the head (logic/reason)
o An understanding of the deep power of the natural world
o Romantics were opposed to the Establishment and felt that many people, particularly the poor, were oppressed and exploited by both the wealthy class and recent and scientific advances
o Romantic poets believed in the power of the imagination and the idea that people could only be truly free if they were rules by their creative and emotional impulses
What was Blake?
- Blake was one of the leading poets of a group known as the Romantics
- Romanticism was a general artistic movement which dominated European culture from the late 18th C until the mid 19th C
- Blake had controversial and rebellious ideas and was associated with the Romantic movement
What did Blake see urban life as?
- Although Blake was a Londoner by birth, Blake nevertheless lamented the choking pollution brought by one of the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution
- He saw urban life and civilisation as bringing an unwelcome shape and order to existence, rather than the organic development found in the natural world
What was happening in England in 18th C?
o poverty, child labour and a horrific war with France (Napoleonic war)
o Women had no rights
o Death rates from disease and malnutrition were high
o The industrial Revolution was taking place at the time of writing of the poem
o French Revolution took place at around the same time – French citizens with low social status were rising up against the powerful aristocracy – Blake was supportive of the French Revolution
What was the Thames like in the 18th C?
In the 18th century, the Thames was one of the busiest waterways in the world, and thoroughly contaminated - hardly anything could survive in its water but bacteria and eels - people (often prostitutes) frequently committed suicide in it, with their disease-ridden bodies rotting in it for days
Babies in the 18th C:
- Babies born to syphilitic mothers (who had been infected by husbands who frequented brothels) had painful seeping eyes
- “I wander thro’ each charter’d street,”
- Blake creates the impression that he is wandering through London, observing life in this bustling, frightening city + final stanza is a reminder of how he is walking through the streets
- It also suggests a person who may be aimless, but is taking time to think about what he sees
- “charter’d” controlled by private companies
- “chartered” could also mean “freighted”, and may refer to the busy or overburdened streets and river, or to the licensed trade carried on within them.
- criticized the granting of Royal Charters to control trade as a form of class oppression
- so, the streets of London are not free – they are controlled by corporate entities which by extension control the people too
- “Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.”
- anaphora - “charter’d” – cirticisng the control private businesses have over all parts of England
- even nature has been chosen to be controlled and dominated by humans
- river Thames was v. dirty
- “In every cry of every Man, / In every Infants cry of fear, / In every voice: in every ban,”
- repetition of ‘every’ and ‘cry’ develops the sense that Blake’s London is a tortuous and agonising place in which to live
- The sense that everybody, regardless of age, is living in this dystopian city pervades
- The lines are structured to constitute a list, building up a picture of an abundance of suffering
- By having both ‘every man’ and ‘every infant’ crying, we can infer that pain and suffering are constant from birth to death
- anaphora, syntactic parallelism – “in every” adds rhythmic emphasis to reinforce the meaning
- “The mind-forg’d manacles I hear”
- Narrator aware of the systems of control – religious, social, economic, political and monarchical – which keep the people in a state of suffering
- trapped by organized society
- “manacles” – physically trapping them
- “How the Chimney-sweepers cry / Every black’ning Church appalls,”
- The chimney-sweeper symbolises the abuse of innocence
- This links to the next line where their cry metaphorically blackens the church, with its alleged care for the weak
- Though the children have dirty, blackened faces, they are innocent
- The church, however, is blackened or sullied by its complicity in the abuse and exploitation of the vulnerable
- “And the hapless Soldier’s sight / Runs in blood down Palace walls.”
- refers to the way events are controlled by outside forces
- The “hapless” soldier’s sigh “run[ning] in blood” down the enclosures of power–metaphorically staining the palace’s pristine walls–could speak to Blake’s understanding of the futility of existence, the destructive stupidity of war, or the fact that soldiers who die while following orders have literally given control of their life to their country, and thus lack agency over their fates
- The “palace walls” form a barrier between the rich, privileged men in power and the poor soldiers
- In a corrupt military system the ‘leaders’ refused to take responsibility for the death of the troops
- “hapless” – meant to be a time of glory where the British Empire is at its strongest yet the emotions of the soldiers contrast this
