London

• Who was london written by?

  William Blake.
• "I wander through each chartered street, Near where the charted Thames does flow"
• "Mind-forged manacles"
• "chimney-sweeper's cry"

  "Hapless soldiers sigh"

  "Youthful harlots curse"
• "Every black'ning church appalls"
• "blights with plagues the marriage hearse"
• "I wander through each charted street

  Near where the charted Thames does flow"

  • "wander" -connotations to freedom and aimlessness

  - romantic counterforce/ speaker is a passive witness

  •" charted" - mapped / documented = repeated to suggest they have become a property of an institution. E.g. the church or the crown.

  • "flow" counterforce established: power of nature - can't be tamed
• "Mind-forged manacles"

  • "mind"- blinkered perception?

  • forger is unnamed: state? Individuals?

  • "Forged" : double meaning

  - to create something with tools

  - to fake something

  •"Manacles" : handcuffs: concrete, physical image

  - metal chains or indoctrination
• "cry" "sigh" "curse"

  • aural portraits of three characters marginalized and exploited by society

  • creates a claustrophobic sound world- inextricable.
• "Every black'ning church appalls"

  • repetition suggests the extensive effects of the state or of corruption? Universality of suffering

  • "church" - corrupt oppressive state

  SHOULD be an active voice of protest against exploitation of children

  • "Black'ning" - the physical bricks? Or of the churches name?
• "Youthful harlots curse"

  • pain, despair, sadness, distress, dismay, harrowing

  • divine punishment

  (Harlots = sex worker)
• "blights with plagues the marriage hearse"

  • "Blights" - sexual infection as metaphor of moral corruption -divine punishment?

  • "plague" - biblical imagery for divine punishment

  • "marriage hearse" - juxtaposition: marriage and a funeral/ life and death.
• Blake uses a dramatic monologue ( a speech delivered by a signal person)