Help with Blake 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' exam question

"In Songs, Blake clearly locates the corruption of human social and spiritual values within an urban and industrial environment"

Discuss the validity of this view with reference to appropriate poems.

Can anyone reword this question so I can understand it? :s-smilie:

What is meant by 'human social and spiritual values'?

Thanks :smile:

Reply 1

Ywiss

I think the question is basically saying that Blake is blaming the cities for the badness of man, if that makes sense. I.e. it's the cities' fault that man is not good any more. Social values will be things like honesty, generosity, forgiveness, pity, etc, and spiritual values is religion, I believe. So you need to go through the collection, find poems which are based in the cities, decide whether Blake is saying that man is evil or not in them, and if he is, decide whether he is attributing the evil to the urban environment. You could also compare them to the ones based in the country.

Off the top of my head, good ones to look at would be the one about London..."mind-forg'd mannacles", that one, and also the ones about orphans and beadles traipsing into the cathedral, can't remember what they're called. Perhaps also the chimney sweep one.

Hope this helps!

Reply 2

Shelly_x

Holy Thursday from Experience would link to this one too, as it shows a supposedly good display of faith being corrupted by the "cold usorous hand" of the corrupted urban population.