Childhood In William Blake's Innocence And Experience Poetry

William Blake was born in 1757 in London, he was self educated. He was intelligent and smart since he was little boy. He learned how to draw and became a painter. In addition to that, he was a poet, prophet and engraver. Blake is considered one of the romantic period poets. He is identified as part of the Romantic literary canon. One of the important goals of this period is to write poetry which appeal to everybody and this is what Blake uses when he write his poems. Through that period there were different attitude to the concept of childhood. This essay will discuss the understanding childhood in William Blake’s Innocence and experience poems. One of the attitudes towards childhood is the Christianity arguments. There are two arguments the first one that says that children are evil, they are born with the sin of mortal as an inherited of eating from the tree of knowledge and they have to be redeemed in

In the other hand, in his poem “ The chimney sweeper” found in Songs of Experience Blake uses a very different tone with the child’s speech, the child seems more like adult and uses adults language.

Blake uses these different representation of children to show natural innocence and how adults are trying to make them look like them and rune their childhood. Blake represents the historical shift which began to understand and consider childhood as its own developmental stage. People after reading Blake’s Innocence and Experience songs start to change the way they treat their children and they care more about their education and their health. They also know that the child’s mind is open to any suggestion and they can fill it with anything they