critics 2

• Bernard O'Keefe: the repetition of 'every' and 'cry' accentuate the universality of the pain and suffering


  On the use of repetition in 'London
• George Norton: religion is active in the children's oppression because it makes them promises about the afterlife rather than dealing with injustice on earth


  On the anti-religious message of 'The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)'

  (a Marxist reading)
• Nicholas Marsh: the poems call for a fundamental change, they are revolutionary works


  On the social protest of the poems as a whole
• Andrew Green: encapsulates the inescapability of their plight, and symbolises the deadly nature of their work


  On the 'locked up in coffins of black' image in 'The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)
• Nicholas Marsh: represents childhood, innocence and natural development ... represents the world as perceived in adulthood ... dominated by church laws


  On the symbolic significance of 'The Garden of Love', first before then after the chapel is built
• Mark Brassington: a profoundly religious poet ... his reading of the Bible ... informs all his poetry


  On Blake's religion and Biblical influence
• Stephanie Metz: Blake uses the child as a point of contrast to a world he views as having gone badly astray


  On children in Blake's poetry
• Tom Paulin: In striking contrast to soi, the sunflower, rather than joyously rejoicing in life, is here tired and weary


  On Ah Sunflower (soi = Songs of Innocence)
• David Erdman: the tiger was frequently used as an emblem of the revolutionary Paris mob


  On symbolism of The Tyger (an indirect quote)
• Mark Brassington: The rhetorical questions ... remain unanswered and even unanswerable, producing a very different tone from the calm certainty of 'The Lamb'


  On the rhetorical questions in The Tyger and the tone created in comparison to The Lamb
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: His games are his work


  On the importance of play (Émile extract)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Nature never implanted evils in children


  On the innocence of children (Émile extract)
• Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion


  Blake himself on how the flawed societal systems themselves lead to social ills
• Terry Eagleton: Blake viewed the political as inseparable from art, ethics, sexuality and the imagination


  On Blake's holistic view of society's issues
• Everything that lives is holy


  Blake himself on life and spirituality
• David Punter: A song of innocence, but not in the sense of a song from an innocent standpoint, rather a song which is about innocence


  On the classification and narrator of The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)
• Blessed are the pure at heart, for they will see God


  Sixth beatitude
• He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence


  Blake himself on repression