London By William Blake 作品赏析课件

1、William Blake 布莱克,Life and Literary Career (1757-1827),Engraver, painter, printer and poet At age 4, had a vision of God, later saw a tree full of angels Went to a drawing school at 10, thus began his career as an artist Started writing poetry in his teens (12) A man of sharp perception, original th

2、inking, exceptional boldness, contempt for reason, deep concern with the Revolution,Works,Blakes poetry largely divided in to 2 groups: lyrical poems: “Poetical Sketches” (poetry of ages 12-20), “Songs of Innocence”, “Songs of Experience” prophetic poems: “Visions of the Daughters of Albion”, “Ameri

3、ca”, “The French Revolution” ,“Jerusalem”, “The Book of Los”, “The Book of Urizen”, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”,Songs of Innocence (1789)天真之歌,Purpose : “And I made a rural pen, / And I stained the water clear, / And I wrote my happy songs, / Every child may joy to hear. ” (“ Introduction”) Des

4、igned to publish for children, in simple language a child can understand, depicting a childs delight in the harmony of nature and people (with illustrations of his own) Strange, simple beauty both in themes and in language and in verse form and rhythm,Some songs from “Innocence”: “ The Echoing Green

5、”, “The Lamb”, “The Little Black Boy”, “The Little Boy Lost”, “The Little Boy Found”, “Nurses Song”, “The Chimney Sweeper” ,“Infant Joy” - description of the happy condition of a child before he knows the pains of existence, optimistic, hopeful, open and resilient in face of wrongs,Songs of Experien

6、ce (1794) 经验之歌,Presenting a world of misery, poverty, disease, war and repression with a melancholy, sometimes bitter tone Experience bringing a fuller sense of evil, joy replaced by bitterness A mixture of the simple and the childlike with the serious and the thoughtful in voice,Some songs from “Ex

7、perience” “London”, “The Chimney Sweeper”, “A Little Boy Lost”, “A Little Girl Lost”, “Infant Sorrow”, “A Poison Tree”, “The Sick Rose”, “Nurses Song” Change of voice into bitterness and anger, more concern about social ills and human weakness, exposition of tyranny in religion and patriarchy,Songs

8、of Innocence and Experience,Depicting “two contrary states of the human soul”: the presentation of the world is colored/prejudiced by the state of mind of the speaker Poems in two collections well paired off: “The Lamb”/ “The Tiger”, “The Divine Image”/ “The Human Abstract”, “The Chimney Sweeper”/ “

9、The Chimney Sweeper”, “The Nurses Songs”,Significance,A precursor of Romanticism in English poetry An innovative poet and thinker (mystic) Strong opposition to rationalism and tyranny of all forms, emphasis on intuition and imagination An undaunted revolutionary,London,William Blake,What do you know

10、 about the poem from the title?,It is a poem about London, the city and people in London.,What is the location of the poem, countryside or city?,The speaker is not the piping, pastoral bard of the earlier poem: he is in the city. The poems title denotes a specific geographic space, not the archetypa

11、l locales in which many of the other Songs are set.,The first quatrain,I wandered through each chartered street, Near where the chartered Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe,What is the speaker doing?,The speaker wanders through the streets of London and c

12、omments on his observations.,What is the meaning of “chartered”?,charter: n. a written statement describing the rights that a particular group of people should have.(宪章) Charter: v. to state officially that a new organization, town or university has been established and has special rights and privil

13、eges.(特许设立),We know that there are chartered companies at the time when Blake wrote this poem. But why was the river Thames chartered?,Everything in this urban space-even the natural River Thames-submits to being “chartered”, a term which combines mapping and legalism. Blakes repetition of this word

14、 reinforces the sense of restriction the speaker feels upon entering the city.,Besides the word “chartered”, can you find other repetitions in the poem? How do you understand them?,It is as if language itself, the poets medium, experiences a hemming-in, a restriction of resources. Blakes repetition,

15、 thudding and oppressive, reflects the suffocating atmosphere of the city.,But words also undergo transformation within this repetition: thus “mark”, between the third and fourth lines, changes from a verb to a pair of nouns-from an act of observation which leaves some room for imaginative elaborati

16、on, to an indelible imprint, branding the peoples bodies regardless of the speakers actions.,Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize the prevalence of the horrors the speaker describes.,The second quatrain,In every cry of every Man, In every infants cry

17、 of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear.,ban: curse mind-forged manacles: restraints forged for the mind,The third quatrain,How the chimney sweepers cry Every blackening Church appalls; And the hapless Soldiers sigh Runs in blood down palace walls.,blackening: the wal

18、l of the church was blackened by the smoke. hapless: unlucky,The Chimney Sweeper,A little black thing among the snow, Crying weep! weep! in notes of woe! Where are thy father and mother, say? They are both gone up to the church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter

19、s snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King, Who make up a heaven of our misery.,How does the speaker present/ describe L

20、ondon?,He presents London through his observation: sight and hearing.,What is the speaker seeing and hearing in London?,He sees despair in the faces of the people he meets and hears fear and repression in their voices. The woeful cry of the chimney sweeper stand as a criticism to the Church, and the

21、 blood of a soldier stains the outer walls of the monarchs residence. The nighttime holds nothing more promising: the cursing of prostitute corrupts the newborn infant and sullies the “marriage hearse”.,Who are the people of London that Blake describes?,Men, infants, chimney-sweeper, soldier, harlot

22、.,Do they have anything in common?,They are suffering from a miserable life.,How are they described?,Ironically, the speakers “meeting” with these marks represents the experience closest to a human encounter that the poem will offer the speaker. All the speakers subjects are known only through the t

23、races they leave behind: the ubiquitous cries, the blood on the palace walls. Signs of human suffering abound, but a complete human form is lacking.,In the third stanza the cry of the chimney-sweeper and the sigh of the soldier metamorphose into soot on church walls and blood on palace walls-but we

24、never see the chimney-sweeper or the soldier themselves.,Likewise, institutions of power-the clergy, the government-are rendered by synecdoche, by mention of the places in which they reside.,Synecdoche:提喻法，以局部代整体或以整体代局部、以特殊代表一般会以一般代表特殊。 如： hands stands for persons, a Solomon stands for a wise man,In

25、deed, it is crucial to Blakes commentary that neither the citys victims not their oppressors ever appear in body: Blake does not simply blame a set of institution or a system of enslavement for the citys woes; rather, the victims help to make their own “mind-forged manacle,” more powerful than material chains could ever be.,The forth quatrain,But most through midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlots curse Blasts the new born Infants tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.,The poem climaxes at the mome