William blake e as canções de inocência e experiência

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO TOCANTINS
CURSO DE LETRAS
LITERATURA INGLESA I

ACADÊMICA: Dinamara Miranda Castro

TRADUÇÃO E ATIVIDADE:
WILLIAM BLAKE E AS CANÇÕES DE INOCÊNCIA E EXPERIÊNCIA

William Blake

Blake was a more conscious rebel than Thomas Gray or Robert Burns. His occasional prose pieces contain ringing denunciations of the neoclassical theory that authors should write only for sophisticated people in a certain manner and on certain subjects, and his several books of poetry are vibrantly alive with the warm humanitarianism, the sensitivity to nature, the deeply felt emotion, and the high imaginativeness that are regarded as important signposts of romantic writing. But Blake was not just a romantic rebel; he was a visionary and a mystic, a person who dwelt comfortably in the twilight world between fact and fancy, who could see God standing outside a window or sitting in a tree surrounded by angels. Mystical beliefs had always attracted Blake, particularly those of the Swedish philosopher and religious writer Emanuel Swedenborg, who claimed that the material things of the world were the symbols of an underlying spiritual reality. By the time he was a young married man in business for himself as an engraver and print-seller, Blake had become so steeped in mystical beliefs and had withdrawn so thoroughly into his visionary world that his wife is said to have remarked: “I have very little of Mr. Blake’s company. He is always in Paradise.” Blake’s series of mystical poems, called the “Prophetic Books,” have proved too obscure for the general reader. His first book of poetry, however, entitled Poetical Sketches, and his second and his last works, entitled The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience, contain some of the best-known poems in the English language. The Poetical Sketches are reminiscent of the delicate, spontaneous lyrics of the Elizabethans. The Songs of Innocence and The Songs of Experience, as the title imply,