The underlying objective in this study is to relate Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) to Fijian society, where his poetry came to us through the curriculum in English at high school during the colonial era.
Abstract
The underlying objective in this study is to relate Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) to Fijian society, where his poetry came to us through the curriculum in English at high school during the colonial era. It seeks to understand, from a Fijian perspective, how William Blake, a pre-Romantic poet, conceptualizes childhood in selected poems. Blake draws attention to the positive aspects of childhood prior to the corruption and distortion of experience through education and socialization. He employs poetry to describe controversial issues like class, child labour, slavery and education during and after the French and Industrial revolution from eighteenth to nineteenth century. The children are shown to be exposed to social and economic changes during the eighteenth century. Songs of Innocence describes the
natural attributes of a child as an emblem of purity and divinity. Gradually when children begin internalizing prejudices, their innocence seeks reassurances and solace from their mothers and other adults in their lives. Most children in Blake’s poems have their childhood cut short to meet the demands of the capitalist economy during the nineteenth century through forced child labor, slavery and poverty. The poems in Songs of Experience show how human experiences, over a period, marks the loss of innocence in children through religious teachings and formal education. The innocent child, once a symbol of purity and divinity, no longer displays these attributes. The harsh experiences of living in society transform the child into weak and sometimes rebellious adult. Blake allows readers to see the transition of a child who,through experience of life, creates a world of problems and sufferings not perceived at a more tender age. The poetic expression of the contrast prompts an analysis of Blake’s poems with focus on innocence and experience in the two chosen publications.
Keywords: William Blake, Children, Childhood, Innocence, Experience, Society